Where's the ID Research?

Wondering what ever happened to all that ID inspired scientific progress that was supposedly just around the corner?

As far as forced prostelytism goes, I've found it in both the Mormons and conservative Christians. Just the other day I ran into 2 Full Gospel Businessmen at the fair who were so insistent on telling me how I could be saved they couldn't hear what I had to say or who I was. I was thinking, "This is just like my interactions with Mormons!" Both groups have a tendency to be blind to the person they're dealing with for the sake of preaching their version of the Word.

As much as I loathe Faux "News", isn't blasting them for a typo a bit much?

Besides, Foley used to be a Democrat. Maybe it's just Faux being, as usual, decades out of date. :-)

Seems pretty clear to me Glen Davidson put his finger on the heart of the problem: the scientific method *requires* the very methodological naturalism religious faith necessarily rejects. Trying to do the best ID research is like trying to generate the loudest silence. Even thinking about doing genuine research besmirches your Faith.

On the other hand, "science" has powerful juju among the Great Unwashed, few of whom know quite what it is, but it produces really kewl wide-screen TV sets. So there's a ready-made audience who just loves to hear that the magic they believe in is scientifical after all.

But how about the actual science itself? Here, we fall back on the well-documented phenomenon of Christian Paranoia - the idea that the overwhelming majority of the people are being persecuted by, well, persecuted, see? Science itself is a wonderful thing, but *scientists*, now, they're Out To Get Us.

And so we remain pure and unsullied by the scientific method, by doing science by the religious method: SAYING we're doing science, and that it proves our Faith is true. The God of ID does not live in the details.

"This is a very, very lonely line of work," Sorenson conceded, running a hand through his thinning hair. "Non-Mormon archaeologists and anthropologists don't want to have anything to do with us

1. Bunch of godless liberals. Any graduate from PCC can outdue any of you guys academically. Some of the rules are weird, but I rather send my daughter their knowing that she will keep her purity until her wedding day rather than send them to any of the heathen insitutions that teaches everyone came from monkeys and wonder why they all act like animals.
All you have to do to know the success of the PCC graduates is get a copy of the NewsLetter or look up the alumni database and you will see how "worthless" their degree really is.
Bunch of monkies.
I am of the opinion that any institution that teaches that your great granddad is a monkey has some major academic flaws.

2. Steve C wrote:
"Why bother..."
That seems to be your problem.

3. PZ Myers wrote:
"Really. When you come online to brag about your academic virtues, you'd damn well better proofread carefully."
I will leave the proofreading up to you. BTW you do well to proofread the whole blog. I am sure there are many others that could use your help.

4. Steve_C said:
"Oh and I think we are related to monkeys by a very distant ancestor millions of years ago."
Is'nt that special
There you have it folks, that's the kind of education that you will be receiving from the secularists.

5. MJ Memphis will not be quite as simplistic. He resorts to the technacalities of double-talk:
"Nope, we didn't evolve from monkeys. Monkeys (and the apes) and humans did, however, evolve from a common ancestor."
Ha! Thank you for your thoughts.

6. "The transition will have occurred much too long ago to fit on most conventional family trees, unless you have an unusually detailed pedigree."
Yes that's why evolution is nothing more than a theory for those who would have nothing to do with God. It's the best the skeptic can do to explain God away.

7. "Oh, and regarding your daughter's "purity": I'd keep her away from any preacher's sons if I were you. And probably keep her away from preachers too, for that matter."
I think I have a better chance keeping her at church than in your STD infected campus whore houses

8. PZ Myers: "My campus is populated by bright, enthusiastic, ambitious young men and women who are here to learn. It is not a whore house."
Yeah and they happen to believe that you one can have sex before marriage. How many times does one have to have sex before she is a whore? For that matter, how many times does one have to kill before his a murderer?
But you are right in one respect. I think you all do not get paid for your promiscuity. So I digress.
Bunch of godless, fornicators!

9. "Do you believe that homosapiens evolved from monkeys?
Not directly, no, and nobody who's reasonable makes that claim."
I know, noone in their right mind enjoys the association. So just hide it behind scholastic mumble-jumble and it makes you feel better.
The devastating truth is that you will not go down very far the geological pedigree and you will run into your long lost relative: the monkey.

10. "Something you may want to check out is the National Genographic Project, specifically their Atlas of the Human Journey, which shows the migration and changes in human populations over the last 60,000 years."
60,000 years. Ha!
You are going to prehistoric times. Do you not understand what that means. Anything that goes beyond what has been recorded in history is pure conjecture. It's amazing that you would swallow this hook and line knowing that there is no record of such a migration.
Of course. Evolution is one big knotted-up conjecture.
Congratulations. You have more faith than I do with all my religion.

11. Of course you will try to play the race game. As a matter of fact, my Dad is black. And I have more black friends than probably you do in your elitist social club.
Jews are God's chosen people and we owe them a great thanks. It was Hitler, the evolutinist, that killed the Jews not the Christian.
Muslims... as long as they are not terrorist. They still need Jesus though.
Interracial marriage... Ha. I graduated from PCC not Bob Jones. And I am married to someone from another race.
Catholics, well, I have family who are Catholic and I love them very much.
Nice try. But you ate the bait.

It is the evolutionists who popularize race supremacy with its survival of the fittest, not the Judeo-Christian culture.
If you have any general knowledge of history, most of the modern day dictators were evolutionists.

12. DavidD : I've made a few "eye-babies" myself. So long as you keep your purity.
I rather have that happen than find out that she's been participating in those group orgies during spring break.
You guys can never understand PCC because you do not understand God. I do not know of a student that went their in my five years that completely agreed with all the policies but they were content to be there for reasons you will never understand.

Of course. I forgot technacalities:
"On
The Origin of Species
by Means of Natural Selection,
or
The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life."

13. "Do you think that's possible? It's true that I didn't learn that at PCC. I didn't send my daughters there, either. I'm sure they're better off that I didn't."
Yes. You can send them to a place that will teach them that the only value they have in life is knowing that they came from monkeys.
That's its OK to have mutiple partners, multiple divorces, and multiple marriages. After all, we are all animals anyway.
So sad.
Justice Jackson noted that 'The Nazi Party always was predominantly anti-Christian in its ideology', and 'carried out a systematic and relentless repression of all Christian sects and churches.'2 He cited a decree of leading Nazi, Martin Bormann: 'More and more the people must be separated from the churches and their organs, the pastors.'2 Jackson cited another defendant, the viciously anti-Jewish propagandist and pornographer Julius Streicher, who 'complained that Christian teachings have stood in the way of "racial solution of the Jewish question in Europe."'2

14. "We are evolving, everthing on this planet has evolved. It is a fact."
Name one thing that you have observed evolve?

15. "There is no devil. There is no hell. There is no heaven."
And we all came from monkeys.
That's a hopeless worldview you have.

You mock and deride Christians as if they are ignorant but history testifies against evolution.
Even these last 50 years testify against it with its degeneration in education as a whole.

If you want stupid, simply look at the product evolution has in the educational system.
For that matter, look at any part in society where evolution is strong and you will have a good idea of how degrading evolution is.

The only profit evolution has ever served is to give man an excuse to deny his Creator.

16. "But she has apparently been indoctrinated by enough uniformed people that she will never be remotely educated about a powerful idea in science.
And as her father you should be ashamed as you have not carried the water correctly."
Science. Ha! Theory. Their has not been one evolutionists that has progressed civilization through this theory. In fact you name any major scientist in history and none of them were evolutionists. Even the greatest Scientist of our time: Albert Einstein did not need Evolution to make a break in Science. In fact he gives the glory to his Creator for his breakthroughs.

17. "Oddly enough, the only people who have ever suggested that I came from monkeys were Creationists. People who are knowledgeable about evolution usually make the distinction between monkeys and apes, and the relevant distinction between apes and our proto-simian ancestors."
Yes technacalities. Excuse me. I forgot. Some of you came from monkies and others came from apes. You can pick and choose I guess where you came from.
The devastated truth is that you have more problems with STDS in any secular college that you will ever have at PCC or any other Christian college.

"Of all the reported STD's in CA: 29% are among 15-19 year olds and 74% are among 15-24 year olds. While teens and young adults have the highest rates, STDs are equal opportunity diseases affecting adults of all ages, races, and cultures."

Think about this next time you go to your whore houses during spring break and act like a bunch of horny monkeys.

18. For that matter, my fundamentalist parents weren't in the least apprehensive about me attending that den of iniquity, because they trusted that I could take care of myself and could make my own decisions about right and wrong. So again, do you trust your daughter or don't you?"
And where are you now. Certainly not in church. You've probably left everything that your parent's instilled in you to fornicate with your boyfriend.
Lady, that is nothing to brag about. You left God for worldview that teaches you that you came from monkeys.
But, I guarantee you that your parents are still praying for you. I gurantee you that Jesus still loves you. And after you spend all your living, you will not have the world their to help you.
It's a story that has been played 100 times over and over again.
Apparently, your parents trusted you too much. But the issue is not about trust its about love. I doubt you would allow your 2 year old to play outside by himself. Yes, you love him enough to place restrictions enough to protect him from harm.
But of course, you do not like restrictions do you?

19. "Dang, Caledonian, he even suckered me into using his incorrect acronym! Thanks for catching that."
I told you are a sucker. Just like they suckered you to believeing that you came from a monkey.

20. "To him science is evil. Secular education is evil. Liberals are evil."
Ha! Nice try.
All of out greatest scientists acknowledged their Creator. It's not science that's evil. It's evolution that's evil. Evolution is a theory, nothing else. It can never be a Science because it can never be tested nor observed. I hate to break it to you, but you guys have more faith than I do.
Secular education is evil. Well, if its foundation is evolution than yes. You are learning.
Liberals are evil. Some. Their greatest problem is that they have a fanatical hatred towards God.

21. "Einstein thought nature was God you dolt. He rejected all religions."
I find it quite humorous how the only thing you guys can come up with is calling me stupid, ignorant. And then you have the audacity to say stuff like the above quote.
GH you have been stupified by the God-hating skeptic.
Their is unquestionable proof that Einstein believed in his Creator. This is clearly reflected in an interview which Einstein later in life gave to an American magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, in 1929:
"To what extent are you influenced by Christianity?"
"As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene."
"Have you read Emil Ludwig's book on Jesus?"
"Emil Ludwig's Jesus is shallow. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot."
"You accept the historical Jesus?"
"Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life." 7

"On the subject of Einstein and God Friedrich Dürrenmatt once said, "Einstein used to speak of God so often that I almost looked upon him as a disguised theologian."
Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Albert Einstein, Z ürich, 1979, p.12, cited by Max Jammer, op. cit. p. 54: "Einstein pflegte so oft von Gott zu sprechen, dass ich beinahe vermute, er sei ein verkappter Theologe gewesen."

Do you believe in the God of Spinoza?" Einstein replied as follows:
I can't answer with a simple yes or no. I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God.

Denis Brian, Einstein, A Life, New York, 1996, p.128

Here let me refer to a very interesting letter, recorded by Helen Dukas, which Einstein wrote to a child who asked him whether scientists prayed.
I have tried to respond to your question as simply as I could. Here is my answer. Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the actions of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a supernatural Being. However, it must be admitted that our actual knowledge of these laws is only imperfect and fragmentary, so that, actually the belief in the existence of basic all-embracing laws in nature also rests on a sort of faith. All the same this faith has been largely justified so far by the success of scientific research. But, on the other hand, everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive. 33

Dukas and Hoffmann, op. cit. p. 32f. of Princeton Theological Seminary.

22. "I don't hate god. There is no god. It's like hating Santa Claus or unicorns. What's the point?"
Yes you do. If you deny the existence of your son or your father, you do so for no other reason but because you hate him my friend.
And that's the way the cookie crumbles.

23. Carlie: I have friends that attended State Universities as well and are doing quite well. But you know that the environement is pagan. And I am sure that your friends would say the same thing.
And if you are trully a Christian, I find it quite disturbing that you should side with infidels rather than reproving their error.
It goes to show how far away from God you have really gone.

24. Well if you want to ignore Einstein's own testimony than it goes to show you your darkened spiritual state.
And it serves to prove my point that people do not believe in God because they cannot believe in God, they do not believe in God because the do not WANT to believe in GOd.

No one would deny the existence of people they see daily, an invisible being is not even analogous."
Yep but you are sure quick to believe in the apeman, though noone in recorded history has seen one.
You are sure to believe in the big bang even though yu have never seen one.
You even are willing to believe that your granddad is a monkey, though you cannot trace your geneology that far.
You believe that you are evolving though you have never experienced and evolutionary process.
It goes to show you that you do not believe in God because you cannot believe in him. You do not believe in God because you DO NOT want anything to do with him.

The devastating truth is that noone in this bored can give one positive contribution that evolution has made to society.
And noone can think of any major scientific breakthrough that resulted from the theory of evolution.
Yep. Everyone has evidence. I am sure that one can come up with evidence for the existence of Santa Claus as well.
We will be seeing his sleigh and reindeer pretty soon.

Ha! Bones? Ha!
You have been stupified.

25. I haven't ever seen Moses. Or Noah. Or Abraham. Or Peter, James, or John. Or Jesus. Therefore, by Yamil's standards...."
Actually that is you and your infidel friends standards Carlie. Read the post. You reject God on the basis that you have not seen him.
you are sure quick to believe in the apeman, though noone in recorded history has seen one.
You are sure to believe in the big bang even though yu have never seen one.
You even are willing to believe that your granddad is a monkey, though you cannot trace your geneology that far.
You believe that you are evolving though you have never experienced and evolutionary process.
It goes to show you that you do not believe in God because you cannot believe in him. You do not believe in God because you DO NOT want anything to do with him.

26. "Just for the record, I don't think Yamil is evil. He just believes in alot of bullshit and is surrounded by people who think the same way. He's so far from any truth he has to lash out and defend his beliefs. He is a closeminded person, and I'm sure he likes it that way. It's comforting and reassuring. That's what ignorance is."
So you believe you came from a monkey and you sorround yourself from people who believe they came from monkey's.
Hmmm. I rather be in my group.

27. The point of the original post wasn't even aimed completely at the weirdness of the religiosity of the place, but at the fact that they are not accredited and don't plan to try, yet bill themselves as a good place to spend all your money on a "degree" that turns out to be completely worthless. "
Yes you are right. But this is coming from someone who never attended PCC and who probably has no idea of the terms of accredidation nor of historic-traditional educational values.
The quality of education has nothing to do with acreditation. Especially coming from an agency that tries to kick God out of the public arena.
So a god-forsaken, STD infested, spring-break whoremongers, institution is accredited. That makes it ok.
Ha!
You take any law student or med student from PCC and compare its tests to most of secular universities you will find that.
If I was able to do the research I would.

I am of the opinion that any institution that teaches that your great granddad is a monkey has some major academic flaws.

28. Jeebus, people. I know you've all hooked a big one here, but is it really worth all of the effort of reeling this thrashing beast into the boat, only to discover you've got a trash fish that rots as you look at it and isn't even fit for fertilizer in the garden?
Play a little longer if you want, but I think that insulting my students by calling them diseased whores is grounds for banning the fool, and I may not have patience for him much longer. Besides, all he's doing here is confirming my worst sentiments towards Christians...and those don't need reinforcing at all."

And I suppose that allowing them to cuss and spew out lies about a college they probably never heard of
So you are the godless infidel that is teaching its students that their granddad is a monkey.
Well, tell me sir.
What good contribution has the THEORY of evolution done for society?

22. Mendel's religion is irrelevant. Also Evolution makes no statement about god or the origins of life.
Ha! Did you ever hear about the BIg Bang?

23. George: I think you should allow Einstein to speak for himself. Just because you think I am an idiot does not make me one anymore than you teaching kids that their parents were monkeys at one time make them monkeys.
"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind." [pg. 153, Calaprice, Quotable Einstein]
"I believe in a Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of human beings." Telegram to a Jewish newspaper, 1929; [pg.147, Calaprice]. (Spinoza believed the more one studies and understands the universe the better one understands God)
"I can not accept any concept of God based on the fear of life or the fear of death or blind faith. I can not prove to you that there is no personal God, but if I were to speak of him I would be a liar." [pg. 58, Mayer, Bite-size Einstein]
"Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe - a spirit vastly superior to that of man...In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive." [Letter to a child who asked if scientist pray, January 24, 1936; pg. 152 Calaprice]
"I cannot believe that God would choose to play dice with the universe." or sometimes quoted as "God does not play dice with the universe." [pg. 56, Mayer]
"I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature." [Albert Einstein, The World as I See It American Institute of Physics Online]
In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of the priests." [pg.153 Calaprice]
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
[Albert Einstein, 1954, from "Albert Einstein: The Human Side", edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press]
"I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. [He was speaking of Quantum Mechanics and the breaking down of determinism.] My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance -- but for us, not for God."
[Albert Einstein, from "Albert Einstein: The Human Side", edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press]
"What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the inquiring and constructive mind." [pg. 56 Mayer]
"The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a permanent institution and created a system of values by which the people were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior." ["Why Socialism" by Albert Einstein, Albert Einstein Online]
"The relativity principle in connection with the basic Maxwellian equations demands that the mass should be a direct measure of the energy contained in a body; light transfers mass. With radium there should be a noticeable diminution of mass. The idea is amusing and enticing; but whether the Almighty is laughing at it and is leading me up the garden path - that I cannot know." [Letter to Conrad Habicht in 1905, pg. 196 Folsing, Albert Einstein: A Biography]

I think Einstein would differ with you in many aspects. I think he would pity you.

24. George wrote:
"Einstein isn't lauded for his religious views today.
At bottom, no one really cares about those views.
They care about his discoveries in physics."

Well at least you are digressing a little. But the point of the matter is that every major Scientist that made a breakthrough in science acknowledged his Creator.
Evolution has done nothing to contribute society other than provide a system wherby the skeptic can feel good in his skepticism.

25. "The big bang. Yup heard of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang
Has nothing to do with the evolution of life on earth though."

Yep that's why every introductory book about evolution mentions the big bang.
Nice try. Maybe next time.

26. "I am a junior at a private college for women. Like Carlie, I am not now and have never been a whore, have never had an STD (and what business is that of yours?) Yamil? Who are you to say otherwise? Who are you to slander people you've never met and about whom you know absolutely nothing? Who are you to bear false witness against me? Who are you? Who? What gives you the right? "
I am sorry. I must be politically correct. You are a godless fornicator.
Hopefully that is better.

27. "How is secular education inferior to a christian education?
You just keep repeating yourself, with no evidence or facts."
Just walk into any Christian school and walk into a public school and you will see a world of difference.
You know that. Everyone knows that. Its a undisputable fact. Christian education is 2 grades above public education and that's if you can get the cops in public schools to control the kids.

28. "You are comparing a concept to a class of persons. That's not going to work. I could say:
Science has done more to advance civilization than any bible-thumping fundie."
This is what you call the semantics game.
Theocentric science has done more for civilization than any evolutionary hypothesis. That's why you cannot come up with one beneficiary contribution that evolution has made for society.
Nada. Zipo.

29. "If not for evolution, you and I would not be here."
That's coming from a college professor. You can't even prove evolution but you glory in your "scientific approach."
But I must compliment you for having more faith than me.

30. "Even if evolution where to be false, which it isn't to the sane..."
Sane people normally do not believe that they came from monkeys.
If evolution were true than you would not have to appeal to prehistoric unaccounted for conjectures. When asked to appeal to the present, you are left with nothing.

31. "Actually Sane people understand that there exists mountains of evidence that shows we have a common ancestor with other primates."
Yes I know. They have eyeballs. We have eyeballs. They pick their nose. We pick our noses as well.
Ha!
Lots of evidence I suppose.

32. "In grades 4 and 8 for both reading and mathematics,
students in private schools achieved at higher levels
than students in public schools. The average difference
in school means ranged from almost 8 points for grade 4
mathematics, to about 18 points for grade 8 reading.
The average differences were all statistically significant.
Adjusting the comparisons for student characteristics
resulted in reductions in all four average differences
of approximately 11 to 14 points. Based on adjusted
school means, the average for public schools was significantly
higher than the average for private schools
for grade 4 mathematics, while the average for private
schools was significantly higher than the average for
public schools for grade 8 reading. The average differences
in adjusted school means for both grade 4 reading
and grade 8 mathematics were not significantly different
from zero."
The 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) was conducted under the direction of the National
Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and overseen by the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB).
NAEP activities are carried out by Educational Testing Service (ETS), Pearson Educational Measurement, NAEP
Education Statistics Services Institute, and Westat. The collaborative and collegial work of many people made this
report possible. The authors are grateful for all their efforts.

"In its April 1983 report it is revealed that approximately 13 percent of all 17-year-olds, and perhaps 40 percent of minority youth, are functionally illiterate. In 19 academic achievement tests given in 21 nations, American students never finished first or second and were last seven times. Nearly 40 percent of today's 17-year-olds cannot draw inferences from written material, and only a third can solve a math problem requiring several steps. Between 1975 and 1980 there was a 75 percent increase in remedial math courses at four-year public colleges. Finally, scholastic aptitude tests (S.A.T.s) fell continuously between 1963 and 1980.[1]"
Are American Schools Working? Disturbing Cost and Quality Trends
by Edwin G. West
Edwin G. West is professor of economics at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and the author of numerous works on the economics of education. Among his books are The Political Economy of Public School Legislation, Education and the State: A Study in Political Economy, and The Economics of Education Tax Credits.

Finally, a report published in 1983 by the Center for Public Resources (CPR) entitled, Basic Skills in the U.S. Work Force, identified serious basic skills deficiencies among secondary school graduates and non-graduates entering the work force. These findings were in conflict with the views of educational suppliers, however. While most companies reported basic skills deficiencies in most job categories, over 75 percent of the school system rated their graduates as "adequately prepared" in the basic academic skills needed for employment.

Somehow with the increase of cops in the Public schools system, I doubt they are doing much better.

33. Einstein certainly held, as his constant appeal to God showed, that without God nothing can be known, but what did he really mean by his appeal to Spinoza? Once in answer to the question "Do you believe in the God of Spinoza?" Einstein replied as follows:
I can't answer with a simple yes or no. I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvellously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's pantheism, but admire even more his contributions to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and the body as one, not two separate things.

Denis Brian, Einstein, A Life, New York, 1996,

34. Moron. Your anecdotal "cops in schools" doubt means less than nothing compared with a study that documents that your conservative Christian schools perform more poorly than public schools. They shortchange their students, as your performance here demonstrates only too well."
Firstly, your link does not work. You may have to check it.
Secondly, a functional school does not need cops to maintain order. I believe the moron would think otherwise.
Thirdly, my quote came from National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). I doubt they have any religous bias.

I do agree that there are some exceptions where a Christian school have a poor quality of education, just like there may be an exeption of a public school that has a higher quality of education than the average private school. There are always exception. The comment is a general rule.
If you would be intellectually honest, you will find out that after walking through most schools (after going throught the metal detectors) in the public educational system, you would have little to brag about.
And that's the way the cookie crumbles.

35. "Yamil. When asked by Rabbi Herbet Goldman in 1929 the question "Do you believe in God?" Einstein answered that he believed in Spinoza's God. He certainly wan't religious in the way that you are trying to portray."
I did not do anything to portray him. I simply posted the quote. The quote speaks for itself.
"Einstein certainly held, as his constant appeal to God showed, that without God nothing can be known, but what did he really mean by his appeal to Spinoza? Once in answer to the question "Do you believe in the God of Spinoza?" Einstein replied as follows:
I can't answer with a simple yes or no. I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvellously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's pantheism, but admire even more his contributions to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and the body as one, not two separate things."
A commentor stated that Einstein was a pantheist simply because he agreed with some of Spinoza's points. The quote above proves from Einstein's own statement that he was not a pantheist. In contrast he acknowledge his Creator. Now granted he may have not been a Baptist, but it serves to prove that he had a faith in God.

36. "Because of his respect, I've been able to be open to his challenges to the degree that I have been able to see his point how even well meaning or kind christians can still be very much part of the problem."
Yea, we are the problem because the Public education need police officers to take establish order.
We are the problem why secular colleges have converted to whorehouses.
We are the problem why most kids graduate illiterate.

I guess one can believe whatever he wants to believe, even if it means degrading oneself to nothing more than a descendant to Papa Monkey.

Kavri you have been a victim of radical stupification.

37. "As for your point about the diversity of Christians and the prevalence of moderate forms of religion -- true enough. However, they have damned themselves. Notice that we are in a country dominated by the religious right, that is engaged in a criminal war, and that has just legalized torture -- torture! -- all with the silent complicity of the Christian majority. I have no respect for religion at all anymore. It certainly has demonstrated that it has no moral force at all. Religion is nothing but a bastion of hypocrisy."
Yes. Those self-righteous puritans that bled and died so that you can have the right to blaspheme God.

38. "Notice that we are in a country dominated by the religious right, that is engaged in a criminal war, and that has just legalized torture -- torture!"

You are insane.
Let me guess, you cannot think of one good thing that George Bush did.
And let me guess its America's fault that the world is so bad.
Why the terrorists plan to blow up our children, we are only allowed to give them a spanking and make them have a time-out.
Ha! And I am the one that is suppose to be close-minded.

39. "I have no respect for religion at all anymore. It certainly has demonstrated that it has no moral force at all. Religion is nothing but a bastion of hypocrisy."
And if you should enter through the church house, there would be another hipocrite added to the congregation.
Its an old worn out excuse for your rebellion against God. I've got news for you: the whole world is full of hypocrites. What are you going to do, move to mars?
The fact is that you will not give account for anyone else but yourself. So you do not have to point the finger at someone else for your rebellion against your God, because he will not here it.

40. "Don't blame it on secularism, or because these are nondenominational schools, as Yamil does. If anything, the Christians have gotten louder on campus. Unfortunately, these are the Christians who tend to worship Republican Jesus."
Firstly, I do blame it on secularism. If you teach kids that they are animals, than they will act like animals. I know the simplicity disturbs you but there is no need to hide the devastating truth behind the mumble-jumble of theory.
Secondly, thanks for the good news about the Christians getting louder. I think if your school wants some objectivity I think it should host debates between the conservatives and the liberals, instead of giving this one side indoctrination that you are accustomed to giving and giving a poor grade to those that do not conform to your indoctrination.

41. "This isn't about rebellion against some fictional entity at all: It's about the search for truth. So far, there hasn't been much truth to be found about this "God" thing. There hasn't even been a good definition of what to look for."
There has not been much truth to the theory of evolution. Congratulations. You have your faith, I have mine. I just happen to believe that I am a result of special creation. You happen to believe that you are a result of some freak of nature, viz a monkey. No thanks.

42. "If I'm cutting through the doublespeak correctly, he seems to be saying that it's a bad thing for atheists to point out wrongdoing."
No. I guess you enjoy playing the semantics game.
The truth is that pointing out wrong doing does not excuse your wrong doing. Its the logical fallacy of tu quoque.

43. "Yammer is committing the cardinal sin of commenters: he's boring me.
Could everyone please ignore him so he'll go rant in church or something? Otherwise, I'll have to exert myself to disemvowel him."
I suppose the only good commentary are those that proceed from an evolutionistic worldview.
I think that if you do not want to here opposing commentary you should've not put up the blog.
And let me guess. I am the one who is suppose to be closeminded.

44. Sorry to break it to you pinhead. But just because you said, "I do not believe it," does not constitute a debunk.

I know that's what Mr Myers has brainwashed you to believe but that is not the way it goes.

The truth of the matter is so devastating that Mr Myers is forced to monopolize the truth. Well i guess its in line with the same type of indoctrination that you are accustom to receiving. And then he has the audacity to tell me that I am close minded.

Ha!

The fact is that every institution has an agenda to indoctrinate. You chose to attend one that teaches you that your Dad is an ape. I chose to go to one where I am taught that I am a product of special creation.

45. So the conclusion of the whole matter is that everyone knows that Christian education is far superior than secular education. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out.
Ever since prayer and the Bible have been banned from public education and evolution took its place, the quality of education has significantly dropped. All you have to do is walk to any school and look at all the police officers that we have to higher to maintain some sense of control and compare that to 50 years ago when The Bible was encouraged.
You can't teach kids that they are animals and expect them to act like human beings.
You can mock PCC for its silly rules, but you cannot deny that Christianity have done more to advance civilization than any evolutionist.

Many of the greatest scientists
of the past were creationists and,
for that matter, were also Biblebelieving
Christians. They believed
that God had supernaturally
created all things, each with its
own complex structure for its own
unique purpose. They believed
that, as scientists, they were "thinking
God's thoughts after Him,"
learning to understand and control
the laws and processes of nature for
God's glory and man's good. They
believed and practiced science in
exactly the same way that modern
creationist scientists do. . . .
This attitude did not hinder them
in their commitment to the "scientifi
c method." In fact, one of
them, Sir Francis Bacon, is credited
with formulating and establishing
the scientifi c method! They seem
also to have been able to maintain
a proper "scientifi c attitude," for
it was these men (Newton, Pasteur,
Linnaeus, Faraday, Pascal,
Lord Kelvin, Maxwell, Kepler, etc.)
whose researches and analyses led
to the very laws and concepts of science
which brought about our modern
scientifi c age. The real breakthroughs,
the new fi elds, the most
benefi cial discoveries of science were
certainly not delayed (in fact probably
were hastened) by the creationist
motivations of these great founders
of modern science.
Nor should anyone suppose that
their commitment to theism and
creationism was only because they
were not yet acquainted with modern
philosophies. Many (Agassiz,
Pasteur, Lord Kelvin, Maxwell, Dawson,
Virchow, Fabre, Fleming, etc.)
were strong opponents of Darwinism.
Even those who lived before
Darwin were strong opponents of
earlier evolutionary systems, not to
mention pantheism, atheism, and
other such antisupernaturalist philosophies,
which were every bit as
prevalent then as now.

No! A survey of scientists established Sir
Isaac Newton as the greatest scientist who
ever lived, and he believed in God, in Christ,
in the Bible, and in Creation. To the chagrin
of modern evolutionary scientists, Newton
wrote more books on theology than he did
on science. The revered "scientifi c method"
was invented by a Christian. The inventor
of antiseptic surgery was Joseph Lister, a
Christian. In bacteriology, Louis Pasteur
was a Christian. Other Christians in science
include:
In hydraulics, Leonardo da Vinci
In hydrostatics, Blaise Pascal
In energetics, Lord Kelvin
In physical astronomy, Johann Kepler
(who said that science was thinking
God's thoughts after him)
In thermodynamics, Lord Kelvin
In systematic biology, Carolus Linnaeus
In chemistry, Robert Boyle
In comparative anatomy, Georges Cuvier
In computer science, Charles Babbage
In dimensional analysis, Lord Rayleigh
In electrodynamics, James Clerk Maxwell
In electronics, Ambrose Fleming
In fi eld theory, Michael Faraday
In fl uid mechanics, George Stokes
In galactic astronomy, William Herschel
In gas dynamics, Robert Boyle
In genetics, Gregor Mendel
In glacial geology, Louis Agassiz of Harvard
In gynecology, James Simpson
In isotopic chemistry, William Ramsay
In natural history, John Ray
In non-Euclidean geometry, Bernhard Riemann
In oceanography, Matthew Maury
In optical mineralogy, David Brewster
In stratigraphy, Nicholas Steno
In entomology of living insects, Henri Fabre
In optical mineralogy, David Brewster
In vertebrate paleontology, George Cuvier

Ed Schools vs. Education

By George F. Will
Newsweek
Jan. 16, 2006 issue - The surest, quickest way to add quality to primary and secondary education would be addition by subtraction: Close all the schools of education. Consider The Chronicle of Higher Education's recent report concerning the schools that certify America's teachers.
Many education schools discourage, even disqualify, prospective teachers who lack the correct "disposition," meaning those who do not embrace today's "progressive" political catechism. Karen Siegfried had a 3.75 grade-point average at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, but after voicing conservative views, she was told by her education professors that she lacked the "professional disposition" teachers need. She is now studying to be an aviation technician.
In 2002 the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education declared that a "professional disposition" is "guided by beliefs and attitudes related to values such as caring, fairness, honesty, responsibility, and social justice." Regarding that last, the Chronicle reports that the University of Alabama's College of Education proclaims itself "committed to preparing individuals to"---what? "Read, write and reason"? No, "to promote social justice, to be change agents, and to recognize individual and institutionalized racism, sexism, homophobia, and classism," and to "break silences" about those things and "develop anti-racist, anti-homophobic, anti-sexist community [sic] and alliances."
Brooklyn College, where a professor of education required her class on Language Literacy in Secondary Education to watch "Fahrenheit 9/11" before the 2004 election, says it educates teacher candidates about, among many other evils, "heterosexism." The University of Alaska Fairbanks, fluent with today's progressive patois, says that, given America's "caste-like system," teachers must be taught "how racial and cultural 'others' negotiate American school systems, and how they perform their identities." Got it?
The permeation of ed schools by politics is a consequence of the vacuity of their curricula. Concerning that, read "Why Johnny's Teacher Can't Teach" by Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute (available at city-journal.org). Today's teacher-education focus on "professional disposition" is just the latest permutation of what Mac Donald calls the education schools' "immutable dogma," which she calls "Anything But Knowledge."
The dogma has been that primary and secondary education is about "self-actualization" or "finding one's joy" or "social adjustment" or "multicultural sensitivity" or "minority empowerment." But is never about anything as banal as mere knowledge. It is about "constructing one's own knowledge" and "contextualizing knowledge," but never about knowledge of things like biology or history.
Mac Donald says "the central educational fallacy of our time," which dates from the Progressive Era of the early 20th century, is "that one can think without having anything to think about." At City College of New York a professor said that in her course Curriculum and Teaching in Elementary Education she would be "building a community, rich of talk" and "getting the students to develop the subtext of what they're doing." Although ed schools fancy themselves as surfers on the wave of the future, Mac Donald believes that teacher education "has been more unchanging than Miss Havisham. Like aging vestal virgins, today's schools lovingly guard the ancient flame of progressivism"---an egalitarianism with two related tenets.
One, says Mac Donald, is that "to accord teachers any superior role in the classroom would be to acknowledge an elite hierarchy of knowledge, possessed by some but not all." Hence, second, emphasis should be on group projects rather than individual accomplishments that are measured by tests that reveal persistent achievement gaps separating whites and Asians from other minorities.
Numerous inner-city charter and private schools are proving that the gaps can be narrowed, even closed, when rigorous pedagogy is practiced by teachers in teacher-centered classrooms where knowledge is regarded as everything. But most ed schools, celebrating "child-centered classrooms" that do not "suffocate discourses," are enemies of rigor.
The steady drizzle of depressing data continues. A new assessment of adult literacy shows a sharp decline over the last decade, with only 31 percent of college graduates able to read and extrapolate from complex material. They were supposed to learn how to read before college, but perhaps their teachers were too busy proving their "professional dispositions" by "breaking silences" as "change agents."
Fewer than half of U.S. eighth graders have math teachers who majored in math as undergraduates or graduate students or studied math for teacher certification. U.S. 12th graders recently performed below the international average for 21 countries on tests of general knowledge of math and science. But perhaps U.S. pupils excel when asked to "perform their identities."

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10753446/site/newsweek/page/2/

Why Johnny's Teacher Can't Teach
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Americans' nearly last place finish in the Third International Mathematics and Sciences Study of student achievement caused widespread consternation this February, except in the one place it should have mattered most: the nation's teacher education schools. Those schools have far more important things to do than worrying about test scores---things like stamping out racism in aspiring teachers. "Let's be honest," darkly commanded Professor Valerie Henning-Piedmont to a lecture hall of education students at Columbia University's Teachers College last February. "What labels do you place on young people based on your biases?" It would be difficult to imagine a less likely group of bigots than these idealistic young people, happily toting around their Handbooks of Multicultural Education and their exposés of sexism in the classroom. But Teachers College knows better. It knows that most of its students, by virtue of being white, are complicitous in an unjust power structure.
The crusade against racism is just the latest irrelevancy to seize the nation's teacher education schools. For over 80 years, teacher education in America has been in the grip of an immutable dogma, responsible for endless educational nonsense. That dogma may be summed up in the phrase: Anything But Knowledge. Schools are about many things, teacher educators say (depending on the decade)---self-actualization, following one's joy, social adjustment, or multicultural sensitivity---but the one thing they are not about is knowledge. Oh sure, educators will occasionally allow the word to pass their lips, but it is always in a compromised position, as in "constructing one's own knowledge," or "contextualized knowledge." Plain old knowledge, the kind passed down in books, the kind for which Faust sold his soul, that is out.
The education profession currently stands ready to tighten its already vise-like grip on teacher credentialing, persuading both the federal government and the states to "professionalize" teaching further. In New York, as elsewhere, that means closing off any routes to the classroom that do not pass through an education school. But before caving in to the educrats' pressure, we had better take a hard look at what education schools actually teach.
RThe course in "Curriculum and Teaching in Elementary Education" that Professor Anne Nelson (a pseudonym) teaches at the City College of New York is a good place to start. Dressed in a tailored brown suit with close-cropped hair, Nelson is a charismatic teacher, with a commanding repertoire of voices and personae. And yet, for all her obvious experience and common sense, her course is a remarkable exercise in vacuousness.
As with most education classes, the title of Professor Nelson's course doesn't give a clear sense of what it is about. Unfortunately, Professor Nelson doesn't either. The semester began, she said in a pre-class interview, by "building a community, rich of talk, in which students look at what they themselves are doing by in-class writing." On this, the third meeting of the semester, Professor Nelson said that she would be "getting the students to develop the subtext of what they're doing." I would soon discover why Professor Nelson was so vague.
"Developing the subtext" turns out to involve a chain reaction of solipsistic moments. After taking attendance and---most admirably---quickly checking the students' weekly handwriting practice, Professor Nelson begins the main work of the day: generating feather-light "texts," both written and oral, for immediate group analysis. She asks the students to write for seven minutes on each of three questions: "What excites me about teaching?" "What concerns me about teaching?" and then, the moment that brands this class as hopelessly steeped in the Anything But Knowledge credo: "What was it like to do this writing?"
This last question triggers a quickening volley of self-reflexive turns. After the students read aloud their predictable reflections on teaching, Professor Nelson asks: "What are you hearing?" A young man states the obvious: "Everyone seems to be reflecting on what their anxieties are." This is too straightforward an answer. Professor Nelson translates into ed-speak: "So writing gave you permission to think on paper about what's there." Ed-speak dresses up the most mundane processes in dramatic terminology---one doesn't just write, one is "given permission to think on the paper"; one doesn't converse, one "negotiates meaning." Then, like a champion tennis player finishing off a set, Nelson reaches for the ultimate level of self-reflexivity and drives it home: "What was it like to listen to each other's responses?"
The self-reflection isn't over yet, however. The class next moves into small groups---along with in-class writing, the most pervasive gimmick in progressive classrooms today---to discuss a set of student-teaching guidelines. After ten minutes, Nelson interrupts the by-now lively and largely off-topic conversations, and asks: "Let's talk about how you felt in these small groups." The students are picking up ed-speak. "It shifted the comfort zone," reveals one. "It was just acceptance; I felt the vibe going through the group." Another adds: "I felt really comfortable; I had trust there." Nelson senses a "teachable moment." "Let's talk about that," she interjects. "We are building trust in this class; we are learning how to work with each other."
Now, let us note what this class was not: it was not about how to keep the attention of eight-year-olds or plan a lesson or make the Pilgrims real to first-graders. It did not, in other words, contain any material (with the exception of the student-teacher guidelines) from the outside world. Instead, it continuously spun its own subject matter out of itself. Like a relationship that consists of obsessively analyzing the relationship, the only content of the course was the course itself.
How did such navel-gazing come to be central to teacher education? It is the almost inevitable consequence of the Anything But Knowledge doctrine, born in a burst of quintessentially American anti-intellectual fervor in the wake of World War I. Educators within the federal government and at Columbia's Teachers College issued a clarion call to schools: cast off the traditional academic curriculum and start preparing young people for the demands of modern life. America is a forward-looking country, they boasted; what need have we for such impractical disciplines as Greek, Latin, and higher math? Instead, let the students then flooding the schools take such useful courses as family membership, hygiene, and the worthy use of leisure time. "Life adjustment," not wisdom or learning, was to be the goal of education.
The early decades of this century forged the central educational fallacy of our time: that one can think without having anything to think about. Knowledge is changing too fast to be transmitted usefully to students, argued William Heard Kilpatrick of Teachers College, the most influential American educator of the century; instead of teaching children dead facts and figures, schools should teach them "critical thinking," he wrote in 1925. What matters is not what you know, but whether you know how to look it up, so that you can be a "lifelong learner."
Two final doctrines rounded out the indelible legacy of progressivism. First, Harold Rugg's The Child-Centered School (1928) shifted the locus of power in the classroom from the teacher to the student. In a child-centered class, the child determines what he wants to learn. Forcing children into an existing curriculum inhibits their self-actualization, Rugg argued, just as forcing them into neat rows of chairs and desks inhibits their creativity. The teacher becomes an enabler, an advisor; not, heaven forbid, the transmitter of a pre-existing body of ideas, texts, or, worst of all, facts. In today's jargon, the child should "construct" his own knowledge rather than passively receive it. By the late 1920s, students were moving their chairs around to form groups of "active learners" pursuing their own individual interests, and, instead of a curriculum, the student-centered classroom followed just one principle: "activity leading to further activity without badness," in Kilpatrick's words. Today's educators still present these seven-decade-old practices as cutting-edge.
As E. D. Hirsch observes, the child-centered doctrine grew out of the romantic idealization of children. If the child was, in Wordsworth's words, a "Mighty Prophet! Seer Blest!" then who needs teachers? But the Mighty Prophet emerged from student-centered schools ever more ignorant and incurious as the schools became more vacuous. By the 1940s and 1950s, schools were offering classes in how to put on nail polish and how to act on a date. The notion that learning should push students out of their narrow world had been lost.
The final cornerstone of progressive theory was the disdain for report cards and objective tests of knowledge. These inhibit authentic learning, Kilpatrick argued; and he carried the day, to the eternal joy of students everywhere.
The foregoing doctrines are complete bunk, but bunk that has survived virtually unchanged to the present. The notion that one can teach "metacognitive" thinking in the abstract is senseless. Students need to learn something to learn how to learn at all. The claim that prior knowledge is superfluous because one can always look it up, preferably on the Internet, is equally senseless. Effective research depends on preexisting knowledge. Moreover, if you don't know in what century the atomic bomb was dropped without rushing to an encyclopedia, you cannot fully participate in society. Lastly, Kilpatrick's influential assertion that knowledge was changing too fast to be taught presupposes a blinkered definition of knowledge that excludes the great works and enterprises of the past.
The rejection of testing rests on premises as flawed as the push for "critical thinking skills." Progressives argue that if tests exist, then teachers will "teach to the test"---a bad thing, in their view. But why would "teaching to a test" that asked for, say, the causes of the Civil War be bad for students? Additionally, progressives complain that testing provokes rote memorization---again, a bad thing. One of the most tragically influential education professors today, Columbia's Linda Darling-Hammond, director of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, an advocacy group for increased teacher "professionalization," gives a telling example of what she considers a criminally bad test in her hackneyed 1997 brief for progressive education, The Right to Learn. She points disdainfully to the following question from the 1995 New York State Regents Exam in biology (required for high school graduation) as "a rote recall of isolated facts and vocabulary terms":"The tissue which conducts organic food through a vascular plant is composed of: (1) Cambium cells; (2) Xylem cells; (3) Phloem cells; (4) Epidermal cells."
Only a know-nothing could be offended by so innocent a question. It never occurs to Darling-Hammond that there may be a joy in mastering the parts of a plant or the organelles of a cell, and that such memorization constitutes learning. Moreover, when, in the progressives' view, will a student ever be held accountable for such knowledge? Does Darling-Hammond believe that a student can pursue a career in, say, molecular biology or in medicine without it? And how else will that learning be demonstrated, if not in a test? But of course such testing will produce unequal results, and that is the real target of Darling-Hammond's animus.
Once you dismiss real knowledge as the goal of education, you have to find something else to do. That's why the Anything But Knowledge doctrine leads directly to Professor Nelson's odd course. In thousands of education schools across the country, teachers are generating little moments of meaning, which they then subject to instant replay. Educators call this "constructing knowledge," a fatuous label for something that is neither construction nor knowledge but mere game-playing. Teacher educators, though, possess a primitive relationship to words. They believe that if they just label something "critical thinking" or "community-building," these activities will magically occur.
For all the ed school talk of freedom from the past, teacher education in this century has been more unchanging than Miss Havisham. Like aging vestal virgins, today's schools lovingly guard the ancient flame of progressivism. Since the 1920s they have not had a single new idea; they have merely gussied up old concepts in new rhetoric, most recently in the jargon of minority empowerment. To enter an education classroom, therefore, is to witness a timeless ritual, embedded in an authority structure of unions and state education departments as rigid as the Vatican.
It is a didactic ritual as well. The education professor's credo is: As I do unto you, so shall you do unto your students. The education professor "models" how she wants her students to teach by her own classroom methods. Such a practice is based on a glaring fallacy---that methods that work passably well with committed 22-year-olds, paying $1,800 a course for your wisdom, will translate seamlessly to a class of seven-or twelve-year-olds.
The Anything But Knowledge credo leaves education professors and their acolytes free to concentrate on far more pressing matters than how to teach the facts of history or the rules of sentence construction. "Community-building" is one of their most urgent concerns. Teacher educators conceive of their classes as sites of profound political engagement, out of which the new egalitarian order will emerge. A case in point is Columbia's required class, "Teaching English in Diverse Social and Cultural Contexts," taught by Professor Barbara Tenney (a pseudonym). "I want to work at a very conscious level with you to build community in this class," Tenney tells her attentive students on the first day of the semester this spring. "You can do it consciously, and you ought to do it in your own classes." Community-building starts by making nameplates for our desks. Then we all find a partner to interview about each other's "identity." Over the course of the semester, each student will conduct two more "identity" interviews with different partners. After the interview, the inevitable self-reflexive moment arrives, when Tenney asks: "How did it work?" This is a sign that we are on our way to "constructing knowledge."
A hallmark of community-building is its overheated rhetoric. The education professor acts as if she were facing a pack of snarling Serbs and Croats, rather than a bunch of well-mannered young ladies (the vast majority of education students), hoping for a good grade. So the community-building assignments attack nonexistent problems of conflict. Tenney, sporting a black leather miniskirt and a cascade of blonde curls, hands out a sheet of paper and asks us to respond to the questions: "What climate would allow you to do your best work? How should a class act to encourage open and honest and critical dialogue?" We write for a while, then read our response to our interview partner.
Now is this question really necessary, especially for a group of college graduates? Good classroom etiquette is hardly a mystery. In the evil traditional classroom, and probably also at Teachers College, if a student calls another a fathead, thus discouraging "open and honest and critical dialogue," the teacher would simply reprimand him, and everyone would understand perfectly well what just happened and why. Consensus already exists on civil behavior. But the education classroom, lacking a pressing agenda in concrete knowledge, has to "problematize" the most automatic social routines.
Of course, no amount of writing about the conditions for "open dialogue" can change the fact that discussion is not open on many issues at Teachers College and other progressive bastions. "If you don't demonstrate the correct point of view," says a student, "people are hostile. There's a herd mentality here." A former student of Tenney's describes the difficulties of dissent from the party line on racism: "There's nothing to be gained from challenging it. If you deny that the system inherently privileges whites, you're 'not taking responsibility for your position in racism.' " Doubtless, it would never occur to Professor Tenney that the problem this student describes impedes community-building.
All