First of all, I don' elect anyone to any school boards. I've long discovered how pathetic the public school system is. My kids will never see the inside of a public school, if I have anything to say about it. My children have either been in private schools or homeschool. And, that's how they will continue to be educated.
The "you" in question wasn't targeting anyone in particular. But since you waded into the pool, let's swim, shall we? Even if your kids are homeschooled and never see the inside of a public school, you still have the option of voting for school board members in elections. And if you don't vote for qualified candidates, then you are just as responsible for the sad state of our schools as those people who vote for unqualified ones.
My wife is also a university professor. But, unlike Harris-Perry, she actually teaches stuff that's valuable in the real world: Nursing. It's safe to say that there's a little science involved there. Some of the kids she teaches are as dumb as a sack of bricks.
You won't get any argument from me. Many of the kids in my classes must come from the same brick factory.
Your anti-religous slant has clouded your common sense. Public schools CAN'T teach any so-called mystical beliefs, period. Evolution has been taught by law in public schools FOR DECADES. Yet, American kids continue to SUCK at math and science. Explain that.
Really? Let's see about that... Here are the requirements set by a school board in Georgia:
- Curriculum must be organized such that no student is compelled to study the origin of the human species in science
- No scientific study in the origin of the human species may be taught at the elementary or middle school level
- There may be no course requirement for the origin of the human species in science for high school graduation
- Elective course work must be available to students to investigate alternatives to the origin of the human species in science, including creationism
- These electives must be identified in course selection guides provided to students and parents
So here we have a school board that seeks to limit the teaching of science, and quite explicitly mentions that creationism must be taught as a valid and scientific alternative. This is the same school board that ordered the now infamous "Evolution is a theory not a fact" (as if the name "Theory of Evolution" isn't enough of a hint) sticker placed on biology textbooks.
And the hicks in Georgia aren't the only ones doing this nonsense. Off the top of my head there was the school board in Kansas that voted to teach "Intelligent Design" as a scientific theory, alongside evolution (and whose members,
surprisingly, were kicked out in the next election).
I don't argue that this is the only problem behind the sub-par math and science education U.S. children receive. There are
many reasons for that and we can get into them if you want. But my point is that when Universities (likes the ones your wife and I teach in) are forced to offer courses high-school level courses as math (at my University we have Math 097 "Basic Arithmetic") you know that there's a problem.
One of the problems is that many courses are electives, and the required math and science courses are a joke. Another is that students aren't
tested properly. They get multiple choice tests, pages and pages of cheat sheets and use scientific calculators with more processing power than the Apollo navigation computer.
There are, of course, oversimplifications in a sense and they aren't the only causes. You could even argue that they are symptoms. But they accurately portray the sad state of our education system.
