Re: funny!

[Daniel Davies <dsquared@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I would have posted to the list but it has nothing really to do with
economics.  Although I do wonder if the Christians could perhaps be
persuaded to produce a "faith based" economics teaching pack.  It would have
the distinct pedagogic and political advantage of being neither less
scientific nor more faith-based than the standard textbooks.

best
dd

-----Original Message-----
From: PEN-L list [mailto:PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Jim Devine
Sent: 28 November 2006 18:30
To: PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: funny!


The lessons learned
Daniel Davies [pen-lurker]

November 28, 2006 04:03 PM

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/daniel_davies/2006/11/the_lessons_learne
d.html

I am a big fan of the "intelligent design" teaching packs that the
god-botherers are sending out to our schools. I hope the government
makes them compulsory. They will be incredibly useful in teaching kids
the single most important lesson that anyone learns in school.

That lesson is, obviously, that adults in positions of power and
responsibility often talk the most extraordinary bullshit. Either
because they are kidding themselves, or because they think it is OK to
mislead you in order to persuade you to behave in some desirable way,
they will look you in the eye and lie to your face.

The widespread knowledge of this fact is surely the cornerstone of any
democratic society, far more so than anything about evolution. So I
say let the creationists make asses of themselves if they want to. The
smart kids will see straight through them and the thick ones were
never going to believe in evolution anyway, so who cares?

In general, for every belief that I don't want to take hold in society
at large, I am in favour of it being taught in state schools. Consider
the question of religion generally. America has a strict blanket
prohibition on religion in the public education system, and it is one
of the most devoutly Christian countries on earth. We have a
compulsory act of worship every day and compulsory religious education
up to 15, and we are largely Godless. This isn't a coincidence.

In fact, this principle could usefully be extended. In regions of the
country where we are worried about the development of Islamic
extremism, we ought to force the teachers to draw up a rota and take
turns every day unwillingly dragging the kids through a tired,
desultory, unenthusiastic version of the basics of Islam.

Just to suck the life out of it even further, we could draw up a set
of incomprehensible "targets" and capriciously cut the school's
funding now and then if they didn't meet them. Wouldn't five years of
grinding through the dullest bits of the Koran substantially reduce
the appeal of radical Islam to disaffected Asian youths? The glory of
jihad would be inextricably linked in their minds with miserable
Thursday afternoons sitting through another bloody hour of RE. It's
just an idea.

My only objection to the creationists, though, is that although they
provide a useful service in creating an occasion for teachers to be
ridiculed, it seems rather unfair that they have a monopoly in
providing patronising mumbo-jumbo. Why don't the astrologists get a
look-in? After all, astrology is a trade that you can actually earn a
living in, whereas "intelligent design" probably doesn't even provide
a full-time income for the guy who designed the packs.

There would also even be some actual educational benefit to the
teaching of astrology; it provides an excellent example of the
philosophy of science of Professor Sir Karl Popper. Popper's
Falsification Criterion holds that something is scientific if it makes
predictions that can be tested against experiment. Astrology obviously
does have a claim to be taught in science classes on this basis; the
astrologers, unlike the creation scientists (and, rather
unfortunately, unlike the Darwinists) make 12 falsifiable predictions
every day and print them in the newspaper; the Guardian doesn't have a
horoscope column but the Observer does so I assume that CiF readers
are aware of this fact.

So on reflection I was perhaps too hasty to be unreservedly
enthusiastic about the creationist's science teaching packs
beforehand. We only really need them, on an interim basis, until
Jonathan Cainer or somebody makes educational resources available on
astrology.
--
Jim Devine / "Crime seems to change character when it crosses a bridge
or a tunnel. In the city, crime is taken as emblematic of class and
race. In the suburbs, though, it's intimate and psychological -
resistant to generalization, a mystery of the individual soul." --
Barbara Ehrenreich