Dave:
I am struck by the thought that we are reaping the results of our short-
sightedness in the education process.
There has been a steady decline in the primary and secondary school
system on critical thinking. We see it at Hopkins. A distressing number
of our students come in not knowing how to write. The reason they cannot
write is that they have not been taught the necessary skills of critical
thought and problem decomposition. In terms of applicant quality,
Hopkins is among the best in the country. What this implies about
critical thinking skills in the *average* college applicant across the
country is very disturbing.
According to last week's New York Times, the few schools that have been
trying to address this are getting legal challenges from parents. I
don't have the article in front of me to double check, but I seem to
recall a statement in one article last week that over 60% of graduating
high school students have never been required to write even a three page
paper. (Don't hold me to the 60%, but I recall being distinctly
surprised and depressed that the number was significantly more than
half.)
So it is unsurprising to me that the creationists are winning. Having
systematically failed in our obligation to teach critical thinking
skills to our children, we should hardly be surprised that they are
unable to debunk the rhetoric of the creationists or evaluate the danger
that it represents to our nation's role as a technical leader in the
world.
There are two things that every country committed to non-rational
thought has in common:
1. Not one is a world leader.
2. Not one has a functional democracy.
In the wake of Dan Rather's recent speech about the rising influence of
the armageddonists, perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that the
creationists don't care if America loses its ability to lead the world,
or even to engage in technological advance.
I confess that I cannot get very worked up about the fact that the
creationist/armegeddonist position is fundamentally self-destructive.
Actually, my reaction is more on the order of "Hey, if you guys really
want to engage in active social Darwinism on yourselves, how can I help
your experiments run faster?"
My problem is that they are perfectly willing to take the rest of us
with them...
Jonathan S. Shapiro