What are your thoughts on Bryan’s stance that the taxpayers,
being the majority rule, should control what is taught in schools?
Who is most qualified to determine the curriculum that should be
taught in public high schools. It is only because the question related to
religious teaching that the Butler Act was passed. There was no objection to how
Euclidean geometry, or Home Economics was taught. The decision on how to teach
those was left to the teacher.
If a teacher is properly trained and certified to teach a course
and has a prescribed textbook from which to teach, then the discretion should
be entrusted to the teacher. The grey area presents itself when material is
introduced which could be considered a violation of the U.S. Constitution and
this would most likely be an issue with religious instruction. Imagine if a
teacher in teaching religious studies instructed her students that the only
correct religious book to consult was the Koran.
That would be a violation of the U.S. Constitution and I have little doubt that
that teacher would be challenged by Christian parents.
As for the majority to determine what should be covered in the
class, the majority generally would not be well-informed enough to make a
decision that would prepare the students for the next grade level or college.
How many adults today would be knowledgeable enough about Physics or Chemistry
to be able to determine what should be taught? A teacher who has trained in
those disciplines would certainly be more qualified to teach the materials to
the benefit of students.
Unfortunately, controversial issues will always be subjected to
the reasoning that the majority because they pay taxes should be able to decide
what and how a subject should be taught even as we noticed in Dayton, TN a
percentage of the citizens were illiterate.
When I was a young student in civics class (remember those?), I remember a heavy emphasis on majority rule being the mark of our democracy. "The will of the people shall be the supreme law," etc. Now, I feel increasingly like Plato: mistrustful of "the people," contemptuous of their aggressive no-nothingism, of their prideful ignorance. I'm seeking a more balanced and nuanced view, but our "leaders" aren't helping!
ReplyDeleteAs for academic freedom, "the people" definitely have no business making substantive policy judgments about the content of curricula. The public, as Mencken apparently was NOT the first to point out, is an ass.
(How's that for a nuanced, balanced view?)
Re: the misattribution of that nasty quote to HLM: https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2013/07/15/you-should-look-it-up/
DeleteSweeping gene survey reveals new facets of evolution.....
ReplyDeleteHere’s an interesting article that explains recent findings around genetic diversity.
Mark Stoeckle from the Rockefeller University in New York and David Thaler at the University of Basel in Switzerland recently published a report that would unsettled the idea of how evolution unfolds. According to the report, large populations species such as humans, ants and rats as stated in textbook biology will become more genetically diverse over large periods of time. The report, which was published in the journal Human Evolution asks if this is true – Stoeckle says, “the answer is no”. He further states, the genetic diversity of our planets 7.6 billion people, as well as 100,000 sandpipers and 500 million sparrows is about to same and wonders how one explains how 90% of animal life, genetically speaking is about the same. He questions if there was a catastrophic event nearly 200,000 years ago that whipped the slate clean.
In order to understand the article DNA barcoding is explained – Animals have two kinds of DNA, one is nuclear DNA which is passed down from parents as is the blueprint for each of us. The other is mitochondrial DNA in which all animals have the same set which allows for a common basis for comparison. A few years ago, a Canadian molecular biologist figured out a way to isolate a gene of the DNA and provide a basis for comparison.
The interesting question that comes out of this is what happened 200,000 years ago that caused the emergence of the majority of species at the same time?
https://phys.org/news/2018-05-gene-survey-reveals-facets-evolution.html