but this report on the Trumpzi attacks on elections workers across the country are a dangerous terrorist campaign against public servants with the active support of fascists in the media, social-disease media and commercial media.
I expect to have more to say about this soon.
TECHNICALLY THIS ISN'T a hate mail post, its an answer to the question what I think science classes in high school should do instead of teaching about evolution. Which I never suggested they shouldn't teach. I'll go farther than the questioner demanded because my view of what education should be is far more extensive than the ineffective idiocy of passing tests and writing papers, feeding back the expected answers, often to teachers who don't understand those answers but just know that's what they're supposed to do.
First, I didn't say they shouldn't teach about evolution, I think they should be honest about its relative unimportance to anyone but a professional evolutionary biologist and its size in the curriculum should be on that basis. I doubt even most working biologists really need to deal with it much.
They should teach that though the paleological and genetic evidence that is presently in hand very strongly supports the belief that all of known life in its diversity is a product of evolutionary change among earlier species, the way in which that happened is almost entirely a mystery. They should be honest that all but the tiniest bit of information necessary to have even a vague suggestion of a complete general knowledge of that is forever lost and will never be recovered because it has to have been of enormous size covering trillions of organisms (maybe quadrillions?) and almost all of it has been obliterated for scientific study. How it happened is not known, why it happened is even less a question that science can answer, though scientists have pretended they understand both with disastrous consequences.
The absurd and unsupported overselling of the minuscule amount that is known is rampant in the teaching of evolution and its allied lore. Whenever you hear "natural selection" given as an explanation, your bull shit senses should be raised. Probably if you heard "genetic drift" used that way, too, though I never have.
I certainly don't think a biology class is an appropriate place to insert the idea that Genesis is a scientific or historical account of the rise and diversity of life. Though I am a lot less fussy about unimportant insertion of religion into schools than I once was and I think, contrary to the conviction of most strictly orthodox "wall of separation" crowd (I used to be one, myself), inserting religion into the public schools is more of a danger to religious faith than it is a danger to science. I think "teaching the controversy" if it were between 6-day creationism and conventional neo-Darwinist evolution would have done a lot more to discredit naive, contra-factual fundamentalism than the Dover decision has done. On an even more important practical level, that controversy should not be taught as it would eat up the curriculum with even more unimportant lore than the conventional teaching of biology does with materialist-fundamentalist evolutionary lore.
But along with excluding fundamentalist lore I think the problems with natural selection and other theories that would attempt to give a final answer to the question of how it happened should be taught quickly before important things are taken up. It's certainly an active topic within actual science as it is now. Though not nearly enough considering that eugenics in all of its horror, INCLUDING THE NAZI GENOCIDES AND THOSE ELSEWHERE are a consequence of a belief that the minuscule and basically dishonest evidence allegedly supports the idea of natural selection. I would base that on the literature, scientific and parascientific, that were AND ARE RIGHT NOW the foundations of eugenics and those genocides. It's there in plain sight for anyone to read, it is the real history of the theory and it should be exposed and dealt with. It was the science of the day and more than its mere remnants are still actively present within science. It drives law and policy as neo-eugenics has risen especially among the elite since the 1970s.
As an aside, I think the huge lesson of the 20th century that various materialist ideologies, whether the elite biological materialism of conventional Darwinism and its vulgar manifestation in Nazism, the materialist determinism of Marxism or the vulgarest of all in capitalism is deadly dangerous has been nearly entirely missed in intellectual circles. If they can miss those glaring and earth-destroying disasters, what can't they miss?
If the supposedly humane to genocidal eugenics practiced across North America, in Germany and elsewhere is not discrediting of natural selection then there is something dangerously wrong with our notions of what science is for. How much more dangerous can it get than 6 million Jews murdered, 3 million Poles, many thousands of Roma, the disabled and the other death lists of the Nazi and other governments? Such as the attempted eugenic genocide of the Abanakis in Vermont and others elsewhere? If science is not supposed to preserve and improve life then it is responsibly considered to be a dangerous intellectual pass-time. As I have pointed out, it is currently perfectly respectable in academia for professional "ethicists" to draw up death lists, we have learned nothing from the genocidal 20th century that has stamped out that murderous melioristic elitism. I would bet you that virtually 100% of such "ethicists" are complete true-believers in natural selection and more generally in scientism.
I'd include a section on the selling of natural selection and its consequent eugenics through fiction, plays and movies, including that much of what those present is an historical lie and often even conventionally scientifically inept. The more I look at how some of that was produced, the more obvious it becomes that the authors motives are as clearly elitist-Darwinist as Oliver Wendell Holmes's were in writing the Buck v. Bell decision. But, then, I favor children being taught to know and reject even elite con jobs as a part of the curriculum. They live in a media saturated world and must be armed against it or we will all pay the price. But that will sidetrack me into vulgar materialism as represented by media created and peddled Trumpzism and the elite and pseudo-religious materialists who support it.
But instead of dwelling on a primitive and naive structuring of a useful biology course based on evolution, more factual knowledge of practical use to everyone should be taught. Viral, bacterial and parasitic diseases and how to avoid them, the need for a healthy diet for everyone, the production of healthy food and safe water and sewage and waste disposal, generally the ways to avoid illness and poor health and bad living conditions. Personal and social cleanliness. Sexual responsibility and contraception. What the hell is a biology class supposed to be useful for for the vast majority of those who are required to take what is, stupidly, designed with the idea that all of them will be future biologists or biology teachers instead of people who have to live through a life, take care of their children and others AND BE TAKEN CARE OF, THEMSELVES. Even the meat-headed prep-Ivy- white collar class elitists might need someone who knows how to put a bed pan under them and clean their ass, someday.
Among the most important topics for the age group asked about are the means of preventing STDs and pregnancies, the danger of early pregnancies and the consequences of it. And, as you'll see below, I don't just mean abstinence lectures, though they should be discouraged from screwing around when they're too young and stupid to avoid problems. Encouraging harmless sexual practices is probably a good idea, too. "Abstinence education" as it is, is hopeless. They're fighting against 24-7-365 entertainment media encouraging them to screw around in the most dangerous of ways, so it isn't as if they're not imbibing sexualizing content from the start.
Another pressing biological need is the discouragement of drinking and using other dangerous drugs INCLUDING THOSE WHICH ARE LEGAL. Teaching the consequences of even casual drinking and drug taking, including tobacco, short of the most dramatic consequences of alcoholism and the more dramatic cancers and deadly respiratory diseases that are a consequence of using the two most seriously abused substances common among Americans and elsewhere is certainly more useful to students of all intellectual abilities than learning the lore of Darwinism and that those who believe in intelligent design have cooties. Though I would hope all students would have a science education that helped them see that neither materialist-random-chance nor intelligent design are actually able to have scientific support, but that's a different post.
But mere information is hardly sufficient to learn how to live a life and how to live with others.
I would expand the science curriculum to include all students who are physically able learning to safely, effectively and hygienically care for those who are ill, those who are disabled, those who are infirm. And I don't mean just taking tests. That learning should cover hands-on skills the vast majority will need when they either have to care for someone or need to have someone take care of them know. And virtually all of us do need that.
Every person should have to deal with people who are unable to use a toilet by themselves, that's true of all infants and of many other People, more so as we reach the end of life. That's something I have been reminded of in the most direct of ways this year when someone I have the care of could have benefited from me knowing more about that on a practical level. It would have been a lot easier to learn all about that when I was 16 and if none of us had to overcome the stupid idea that it's shameful to need such help or that there was something undignified in giving it.
I'll put it this way too - NO TEENAGE BOY OR GIRL SHOULD EVER GET OUT OF HAVING TO CHANGE DIAPERS BEFORE THEY MIGHT PRODUCE A BABY - and for adults at all age levels who have never had that experience. I'd say any man who fathers a child outside of a committed relationship should have to. Imagine if Trump had had to do that before he screwed around, Brett Kavanaugh. And that's true of other such life skills. I think all teenagers should have to deal with the most bratty of brats, such as so many immature accidental parents and so many traditional type manly men stupidly inflict on the world as they are too immature and self-centered to responsibly raise the children they produce.*
All students of all genders should have training in practical nursing, including always practicing it responsibly, hygienically and patiently, with forbearing, and dealing with their squeamishness about disgusting odors and sights, including blood and wounds. I'd structure it as a mandatory national service requirement that no one except those with the most severe intellectual or physical disabilities could get out of. Assignments be given at random so the rich and connected would have the same experiences as the poorest students. Put professional practical and registered nurses in charge of overseeing it with strict requirements that they do that equally and without favor. They should all get some experience in overseeing others doing those things, maybe that would help them if they are ever given supervisory roles as part of their other professional responsibilities. Doctors should certainly understand what the nurses and others they work with do in that regard.
That's true of all students, those in public schools and those in even the most elite prep schools. As a matter of law no one should be allowed to receive a high school diploma or university degree without them having to learn those lessons.
--------------------------
Of course, if I had my way I'd tear down all prep schools, secular and allegedly religious, especially the most elite ones. The description of life in elite prep schools that we got during the Kavanaugh hearings convinced me that all elite educational institutions should be leveled out of existence and the public schools raised to be those all equal People deserve. The list of criminals in our government who are a product of elite education is enough to identify them as an indigenous criminal class, a significant percentage of those with elite educations, I'd bet a majority of them. Especially if you note how such elite criminals have the power to unillegalize their crime.
The conditions and resources in the now worst public school should not be escaped by the brats of the rich who then cause the schools for the majority to be anything from atrocious to less elite to Second Amendment killing fields. That's certainly another tie in with natural selection though it was among the things responsible for that theory to arise and flourish in the first place. If the Supreme Court had to face the heightened possibility of their children, grandchildren, the children of those they are close to being mowed down by guns they'd never have made our schools so dangerous as they are now.
I would not allow the Supreme Court to thwart that leveling. Today it is dominated by such criminals, a product of such elite education, I wouldn't trust future courts to not be dominated by their ilk because that court has always been dominated by them.
I would also be on the look out for professors and others in university schools of education theorizing practical necessities of people in real life out of the curriculum. A lot of the worst in education I've seen has come out of such PhD education so-called experts selling bullshit to local and state education authorities. One of the school districts in my area fell under the idiotic nonsense that came out of an Ivy League education prof elite preppie who never set foot in a public school as a student, teacher or parent. One of the first things they got rid of were the health and safety classes in their quest to pretend that they were a prep school. They've also encouraged a lot more students to drop out instead of keeping them to graduation, teaching them things they'd need to know. I haven't noticed they've produced the white-collar class of upwardly mobile professionals they probably got sold in the promotion of the theory. It's a flop and it's still stuck in place decades later. I'm not a huge fan of local control of schools. Most developed countries don't do it that way.
*
In 1959, a young, gay seminary student named David wrote a letter to the head of the Revised Standard Version biblical translation team challenging the RSV’s use of the word “homosexual” in 1 Corinthians 6:9. David wrote: “I write… because of my deep concern for those who are wronged and slandered by the incorrect usage of this word. Since this is a Holy Book of Scripture sacred to the Christian, I am the more deeply concerned because well-meaning and sincere, but misinformed and misguided people may use this Revised Standard Version translation of 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 as a sacred weapon, not in fact for the purification of the Church, but in fact for injustice against a defenceless minority group.”
Dr. Luther Weigle, the Dean of Yale Divinity School and the head of the translation committee, wrote back to David and admitted that the RSV translation was wrong—leading to a change in a later version of the RSV to the more generic phrase “sexual perverts” rather than a specific condemnation of gay people. The letters between David and Dr. Weigle remained buried in the Yale Archives until Kathy Baldock and her colleague Ed Oxford found them in 2018. Remarkably, Kathy was able to connect with David, who is now over 80 years old and a retired pastor in Canada. Here, he shares his story publicly.
Still taking care of a family member, I'm working on something but it's not ready yet.
