Look Out, First World! It's Catching!

Even the Canadian PEARL (Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory) is threatened.

Just a reminder that religious fundamentalism is growing and thriving everywhere in the world:

Canada:

This week in Ottawa, Ontario, an international conference on evolutionary biology is being held. Scientists from North America and Europe will meet to discuss progress in biological research, further advances in evolutionary theory and many other topics of interest to practitioners of evidence-based science and the people who recognise its importance to humanity.

Ironically, however, the host country has been weathering an embarrassing number of popup storms in the officially clear skies of Canadian rationality and progress. Religious fundamentalists have "planted churches" in every province and territory, just as they have in the USA, and (just as they have in the USA) they have been patiently following a multi-year plan to "restore" Canada to Christianity (their own, narrow version, naturally). As in the USA, they started by undermining the foundation of modern, free society - public education - and as in the USA, their favorite targets are science and sexuality.

Canadian scientists march to draw attention to the suppression of evidence-based science.

"The cuts, according to the organizers' media release, are being imposed on critical research programs in Environment Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the National Research Council of Canada, Statistics Canada, through the closure of Experimental Lakes Area, the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory and the First Nations Statistical Institute, and through the elimination of the National Science Adviser and National Round Table on Environment and Economy."
and

"There is growing concern in many quarters about what is being viewed as the government's excessive information control. Several organizations say they are concerned with what they call the silencing of Canada's federal scientists." Natalie Stechyson, The Ottawa Citizen.

Read the full story: Science community to protest research cuts....  Ottawa Citizen, July 8, 2012.

Also, while Canadians are rightly proud of their country's official recognition of the humanity and equality of LGBT people, there has never ceased to be a determined opposition to it (coming mainly from religious groups, as usual), and they are making gains:

Canada: Marriages of Foreign Gays are Invalid,  MSNBC, January 2012

Gay activist murdered in Halifax, Halifax Chronicle Herald, April 17, 2012.

Southern Ontario School board hires security after threats because of upcoming vote to ban distribution of Christian bibles in public schools  story.

Europe:

Even in 2007, some Europeans recognised that creationism was posing a serious threat to education in European countries. In October of 2007, PACE (Parliamentary Assembly Council of Europe) adopted resolution 1580, The dangers of creationism in education.

Giant's Causeway creationism "controversy" in Ireland.

This opinion piece in the UK's The Daily Mail manages to be anti-science, anti-American AND tell readers that "no matter how fast and far we run from Him, we always seem to make our way back, rather like someone lost in the forest." From sneering condescension toward science and scientists (Carl Sagan...infantile?) to barely concealed, seething contempt for anything American, this piece is not to be braved without donning a hazmat suit. Oh, and it is dissing the potential discovery of the Higg's boson.

Asia:

Pakistan's only nobel laureate, physicist Abdus Salam, is shunned in his home country and references to him are stricken from school textbooks. Salam did pioneering work in the effort to discover the subatomic Higg's boson (often misleadingly called the "god particle"). Story here.

Indian skeptic charged with blasphemy for rationally explaining a "miracle".  Friendly Atheist, April 14, 2012

Sanal Edamuruku's situation worsens. (The Humanist, July 4, 2012). After being hounded out of India for revealing the simple scientific explanation for a Catholic "miracle", Sanal Edamuruku has been the target of an international manhunt at the urging of the Catholic archdiocese in Bombay.

What's That, Mitt? If Elected, You Plan To Deliver the Death Blow to Public Schools? Quelle Surprise!

Hey, Mitt. Why not skip the slow torture and just raze them all to the ground?

Aaaannnndddd....Lynna from the commentariat at Pharyngula posted a link to this New York Review of Books review of Mitt Romney's campaign white paper, A Chance For Every Child: Mitt Romney's Plan For Restoring the Promise of American Education.

And what a paper it is. Vouchers!  Draining to public purse to fund private religious schools!  Public funding for teaching religious dogma as scientific and historical fact, ceasing the certification of teachers (and establishing no-fault firing), on-line for-profit "schooling"....oh the list of conservative red meat-flavored goodies is almost endless.

"The central themes of the Romney plan are a rehash of Republican education ideas from the past thirty years, namely, subsidizing parents who want to send their child to a private or religious school; encouraging the private sector to operate schools; putting commercial banks in charge of the federal student loan program; holding teachers and schools accountable for students’ test scores; and lowering entrance requirements for new teachers." Diane Ravitch, New York Review of Books, July 2012.

Our era's "civil rights" issue: take that you whiny women,
people of color and..wait, except latinos. I need latino votes
and really latinos can almost pass for white...

Most nauseating Best of all, Romney unblinkingly refers to the battle over public education as "the civil rights issue of our era".

"Romney claims that school choice is “the civil-rights issue of our era,” a familiar theme among the current crop of education reformers, who now use it to advance their efforts to privatize public education…."

Once again, Mitt Romney's utter lack of respect for the real issues which confront average Americans every day flabbergasts yet simultaneously doesn't surprise anymore.

In my post about education yesterday, I alluded to the fact that religious conservatives consider free, high-quality public education to be their number 1 enemy (although they portray it as the enemy of all the public, which is yet another instance of "evil is good" "black is white" obfuscation of reality which is such a fixture in Christian manipulation of the public discourse).  With this document, Mitt Romney has not merely signalled but trumpeted his intention to deliver the death blow to American public education.

"Another school [in Louisiana], the Eternity Christian Academy, which currently has fourteen students, has agreed to take in 135 voucher students. [Details from Bobby Jindal's education reform legislation that follows the Romney model --Louisiana enacted the reform law in April, 2012.] According to a recent Reuters article:
'...students in this school “sit in cubicles for much of the day and move at their own pace through Christian workbooks, such as a beginning science text that explains “what God made” on each of the six days of creation. They are not exposed to the theory of evolution.'"

The founding fathers would weep.

Public Education - Public Enemy #1? Religion Says Yes!

“Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.”  Carl Sagan

This post is the first in a series on public education. The next post in the series can be found here.

"I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised, for the preservation of freedom and happiness...Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish & improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils [tyranny, oppression, etc.] and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance." Thomas Jefferson (letter to George Wythe, August 13, 1786).

Thomas Jefferson's lifelong belief in the importance of public education as the bedrock of a free Republic was shared by many of the founding fathers.  A major reason why most of humanity has lived in virtual enslavement for most of history is that the common people have been historically excluded from the education that was strictly reserved for the wealthy and priestly classes. As students of the Enlightenment, the framers of the Constitution of the United States of America understood from reading history - and through personal experience and observation - that the elusive key to greater liberty and equality for humankind has always been education.

Knowledge is power and education is the great equalizer. The founders knew that public education - the dissemination of the power of knowledge throughout a population of equals - was vital to a free and productive society. They believed that an educated citizenry was one of the foundational "common causes" behind which all citizens ought to throw their full support for the betterment of humankind and for the good of the new nation. 

They also knew that this public education - which would become the backbone of a more just and free society, the first of its kind in human history - must be protected from ideological influences and agendas. They had witnessed firsthand the oppression and tyranny that results when religious ideology is imposed upon a people, and they tried - via the establishment clause in the Constitution - to strike a balance between protection of an individual's religious liberty and the protection of the general population from any religious group which might seek to impose its religious ideology on the entire people. 

 "...kings, priests and nobles..."

"Kings, priests and nobles" -  and their modern-day equivalent: megachurch leaders, pastors and conservative religious hierarchies - have always known this and thus feared and hated the idea of an educated public. Elites do not want social equality. More social equality is seen by powerful elites as a zero sum game: more power and wealth for the general population means less power and wealth for them, which is why education has historically been the ruthlessly guarded privilege of those elites.  Throughout history, in many parts of the world, they made sure that it was actually illegal to educate the common people. 

Wealthy, religious elites - whose wealth is sucked out of the people over whom they have religious power - fear an educated population the most and, when public education is legally mandated (as in the USA), they will do their utmost to undermine and impoverish it. They know that an educated populace will inevitably lead to the disruption of their traditional power structures. They recognise that they cannot exploit the people if the people are educated. Educated people have access to the knowledge once exclusively owned by religious elites, and can separate facts from fiction. Educated people develop confidence, independence and aspirations. Educated people fight back against exploitation. 

A rare, true church sign slogan.

"Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to ; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty." Thomas Jefferson, 3rd US President (letter to James Madison, 4th US President, December 20, 1787).

Jefferson's insight no doubt informed religious conservatives in their strategy to undermine the Republic and reduce the United States to an authoritarian theocracy. They recognized that it really was education, primarily, which enabled millions of people to rise above the poverty and disenfranchisement which has been the fate of "common people" everywhere for all of human history. And it was education of the people which was helping millions of Americans enjoy a better standard of living - earned through their own well-educated efforts - which had been impossible when they were an uneducated peasantry whose life circumstances and well-being were entirely at the mercy of a culture which allowed all power and wealth to be concentrated into the hands of a very few, usually religious, elite groups.

...which is exactly what conservatives fear most!

It was this fact -  that free public education gives power to the people instead of to religious elites - which put the American school system at the top of the religious conservatives' hit list. Filtering information through their own self-interested Biblical lens, and keeping the vast majority of people fearful, ignorant and acquiescent because of the threat of eternal divine punishment had long been the primary means of concentrating power into the hands of the priestly classes, but public education -by giving the people access to the knowledge that once was the secret posession of the clergy, and the critical thinking skills with which to assess the claims and threats of religion - undermined the theological house of cards upon which church authority rests, breaking its stranglehold over the public psyche. 

Millions of educated people who are capable of understanding the ideologies and questioning the actions of powerful groups in their midst become far more difficult to control and exploit. Millions of educated people, who have been taught history and critical thinking skills, are able to recognise when the doctrine of a religious elite is immoral, self-interested power-mongering.  Therefore, it became the first priority of the religious right movement to undermine and discredit public education while simultaneously spearheading a parallel assortment of pseudo-educational systems with which to replace it.  The Christian homeschooling movement is not, and never was, a grassroots phenomenon. Likewise, the private Christian school and college campuses mushrooming up all over the country are a targeted investment in this strategy.

As they insinuated themselves into school boards across the country - running as fiscal conservatives to get elected only to turn around and concentrate on their religious agenda once in power - religious conservatives began a determined campaign to inject religious mythology into public school classrooms, inventing fake "controversies" over established scientific theories which conflicted with Christian beliefs, and often succeeding in forcing grossly misleading "information" into school curriculums. The ongoing effort of Christian conservatives to force the teaching of Biblical creationism in science classrooms, falsely presenting religious belief as a scientific theory to school children is a chilling example of this.

Who needs public school when all you'll ever need to
know can be found in the Bible?

In addition to these determined efforts to force schools to teach a generation of American children lies and mythology as "historical facts" and "scientific theory" (which may potentially handicap them for life), conservative school board members in key districts have also moved to prevent children from learning vital critical thinking skills. The reason why the religious right wants to reduce or eliminate higher order thinking skills in the general population is obvious - as mentioned above, properly educated people are equipped to see through the religious right's agenda - but the unintended consequence may very possibly be a population rendered incapable of meeting the demands of a competitive global race for technological and scientific innovation due to huge gaps in their education.

Consider this plank in the Texas Republican party platform:

Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority. (from a position statement in the 2012 Texas Republican Party Platform).

The Texas Republican Party is openly calling for a ban on the teaching of vital critical thinking skills. They are not shy about saying this - it is right there in their published platform statement - and, thanks to the current climate of rising authoritarian anti-intellectualism, they are not shy about saying why they want to deprive Texas students (and ultimately all students) of the right to a full education, including the development of the ability to think for themselves. 

...and only This...

They intend to change Texas law so that religious belief will replace scientifically verifiable knowledge. They intend to enshrine into law that children cannot learn anything in school which will conflict with Christian teachings. The reference to "behavior modification" is a dog whistle thrown in to arouse right wing paranoia. HOTS have nothing to do with "behavior modification"; that sentence makes no sense whatsoever to anybody who actually understands educational theory, but pseudo-intellectual sounding claptrap is the stock in trade of Christian conservatives justifying their rejection of any secular initiative. Likewise, the jarringly inappropriate reference to "parental authority" and "fixed beliefs" makes no sense, unless the crux of the position is that schools will be prohibited from teaching pupils anything at all other than what parents and churches have already told them is all they need to know. That would make public schools unnecessary and redundant. 

Which is exactly the point.

Preventing a generation of children from receiving a proper education is precisely the goal of the religious right. For those children that they have already siphoned off into fundamentalist Christian homeschooling and private Christian schools, the pseudo-education has already been well underway for more than a generation. It is the public schools which still vex them. Limping along, greatly hampered by the constant attacks, the draining of resources through determined conservative legislative attacks on the value and sincerity of public education and teachers, and the bleeding dry of funding and student enrollments via school voucher campaigns redirecting public funds into religious schools, the public school system has been under constant, vicious attack for over three decades. Unless the American people wake up and put a stop to it, the religious right may succeed in completely dismantling public education, leaving students to the deliberate miseducation of religious schooling, thus plunging the country back into a new kind of dark age, with both intellectual and social liberty lost.

...before it's too late!

"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society, but the people themselves: and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is, not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. this is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." Thomas Jefferson (letter to William C. Jarvis, September 28, 1820).

Ironically, although President Jefferson's considered opinion that a free society depended upon a publicly-educated population was the insight upon which the religious right based its attack upon America, as soon as they had achieved their goal of majority influence over school boards and state legislatures, they acted to try to erase Thomas Jefferson and other progressive thinkers from the text books which American children will study, replacing them with conservative idols and religious ideology. 

Nearly destroying the public education system in the United States was never simply a mildly-regretted, unintended consequence of the conservative Christian campaign to "take back over" America.  Preventing people from having access to a free and intellectually rigorous education was always their goal.  Millions of publicly-educated people are the only safeguard standing between a free, democratic Republic and an authoritarian, theocratic oligarchy. The self-annointed "moral majority" understood this back in the late 1960's when they launched their campaign to undermine the foundations of American society and transform it into a theocracy with themselves (naturally) in control. The first and most critical stage of that campaign strategy was to destroy public education - the greatest threat to their power - and in that quest they have had alarming success. 

Recommended reading (No seriously, I'm begging you: read these things!): 

A thoughtful, in-depth and very readable article on the conservative Christian strategy to rewrite history, erase progressive contributions and undermine the entire foundation of American society: How Christian Were the Founders? Russell Shorto, New York Times Magazine, February 11, 2010

Why public education must be preserved, Valerie Strauss, Washington Post.

Texas textbook standards revision story here.

PBS, School: The Story of American Public Education.

Rev. Jesse Jackson Jr.  The moral imperative for education policy.

Dr. P Z Myers, A well informed citizenry is the only true repository of the public will.

Patrick Murfin's brief history of public education here.

Columbus Dispatch story

Louisiana private (religious) schools voucher story here.

"...improve the law for educating the common people...the people alone can protect us against...tyranny..."