It's a monster, as are all education standards documents. Typically, the problematic phrases are buried in several places. I haven't read it yet, so I can't point them out, but I suggest to you that mere argument about whether Someone directed the Big Bang or not is not the problem here."

I never mention was a problem; so your suggestion is worthless.

What's truly worthless is trying to carry on a conversation here. Nevertheless, someone had to point out that there was, in fact, a reference to the text of the KS science standards made available by the reporter to people who read all the way to the bottom of the page.

You mentioned getting "worked up" about the issue. If someone is worked up, there is a problem. You sent the reader to bede.org.uk, which is not from Kansas and has no relevance to the situation, or to the US Constitution, either. You completely misrepresent the issue that is under debate in Kansas by introducing a non-fundamentalist view of biology and pretending that this is the issue in Kansas, which it isn't. Your boy at bede.org says that he supports scientific concepts, but reserves the responsibility for the origin of the universe for God. Science, at this point, has no dog in that fight. That is not what the deal in Kansas is about.

"I have lived through the attempted cooption of science by religion in school. We are talking about an attempt to declare scientific method and theory to be open to popular vote rather than rigorous standards."

The scientific method is open to popular vote. One need only look at the body of work concerning Global warming to prove this point.

I'll turn that one over to Davin and to R.L.

But I would say that in a Republic, the ultmitate authority on what is taught would rest with The People. When individuals assume The People are too stupid and can not to trusted with this aspect of soveriegnty they are undermining this country and basis upon which it was founded.

Ah, I see. Individuals are somehow not ThePeople. Only the large conglomerate ThePeople has any intelligence. Should someone stand up and disagree, that person is no longer of ThePeople and has forfeited all claim to intelligence. Even if he is telling the truth. Resistence is futile.

Good to know where you stand on this. Did you know the ThePeople once believed, and taught, that the indigenous American tribes were savages, that tomatoes were poisonous, and that swallowing mercury, straight, was a good cure for intestinal obstruction? Why do we not still believe and teach these things? Because individuals opposed the revealed wisdom of ThePeople.

"Incidentally, the 17-year-old says we should have academic courses on religion in school, as electives, so that this stuff has somewhere else to go. She's right. The "intelligent design" people wouldn't like that, though: they want "equal time" in the science classroom, whether their philosophy is science or not."

The 17 year old should have the choice of studying religion in school and it is not important whether some "intelligent design" people do or don't want this.

Yes, I'm afraid it is. Her point, in case you missed it, was that "intelligent design" could then be taught in an appropriate class, i.e., religion. Intelligent design enthusiasts want to be in the science classroom, because they want their philosophy to be considered equal to a theory that is the underpinning of everything we have learned about biology for the last hundred years.

Another aspect here is the administration vs teacher. The administration task is to hire and fire teachers and SERVE the needs of the teachers and students [who are also accepted or expelled by the administration]. Dictating what a teacher should teach will give poor results, the teacher must take responsibility for his/her task of teaching. This of course involves the classic problems regarding power and the need of employing various mechanisms to balance this power.

I think I understand what you're getting at, and I agree to a point. Nevertheless, if we have no standards, we have even less of a common culture than we have now.

Also, we have the whole First Amendment issue. You speak of students who are "accepted", but this implies they can choose whether or not to attend, which they can't. We are talking about mandatory attendence years, and about one religious group attempting to screw with the science standards and curriculum for an entire state in order to give their religious views undue influence over the classroom environments across an entire state. The students who don't share those views ought to be able to attend science class and receive an education in science and science only. At the very least, they ought to be able to ridicule any ideas presented in the classroom that are not science.

(Long ago, PA standards had a stipulation in 7th grade life science that one day be devoted to a debate on evolution vs. creationism. One of the teachers in our Middle School refused to allow it, because he believed in creationism. His best students routinely trounced creationist supporters during the debate. The subsequent acrimony undermined cooperative lab work for weeks.)

"Incidentally, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study initial results for 2003 are available. American children score slightly above average, but below Asian nations who are not engaged in making science ideologically acceptable. If we are not interested in improving actual education, our kids and grandkids will be doing the kind of factory work that "Made in Japan" signified to me when I was a kindergartener. Welcome to the Third World."

I would say the Asian nation have an advantage of having a relatively fresh look at education- and you could say they cherry pick what works best and the choose the best teachers.

I have the advantage of having read a little of the reports. I wouldn't say they "cherry pick" what works best, but that they have a superior approach to methods of teaching math and science, starting with exercises supporting conceptual and theoretical knowledge rather than rote learning even among their youngest students. As for chosing the "best" teachers, it might be possible that they invest more in teacher training at the front end, and in retention of talent in the teaching pool by offering wages competitive with industry to teachers already in the field.

But I think that one has to understand the US dominates the world in manys ways, and also it would be counter productive to want to continue to dominate the world and really couldn't continue this level of dominance if we wanted to [our level of dominance in all areas has been shrinking for decades]. We want to the whole world to be more prosperous.

If everyone were more prosperous, the likelihood of peace would be greater, but it might also mean that America would have to live within its means.

I think that in terms of Education it is similar to Security. Take away America miltary power and the world will devolve into chaos, take away American Education and the world would devolve into ignorance.

LOLOLOLolololol...ol...olol... And take away American humility, and ... oh... subtract zero and there's really no difference. How did the world ever survive without us?

In other words we have been purposely assisting other countries in terms of security and in terms of enlightenment/education.

And we have not been educating our own kids. Read the reports. We can't keep this up.

The idea that if Japan does better, we will do worse is not any different than if your neighor does better you will be worse off.

You misunderstand me. When I was little, "Made in Japan" meant "produced with cheap labor". Later it became "Made in Taiwan", "Made in Korea", and so forth. The source of unskilled labor has moved, because as the labor in a nation acquires more skill, the unskilled work is less attractive. We are becoming the new unskilled labor pool, even as we sit back and congratulate ourselves on how wonderful we are. The hammer will fall, and we won't even know what's causing the whistling sound over our heads as it does.

With that said, we have lots of improvement we can achieve in the area of Education- if the Education had made the same level of reform has had our miltary in the last couple of decade, we would be far ahead of other countries in terms of education.

Yes. You illustrate where the true values of ThePeople lie. We pay for what we value.