One class of things that has always bothered me is separation of church and State issues. Here in Texas, as in several other southern states, there has always been a fairly nasty tug-o-war between those who are looking to con-fuse[1] their religious beliefs and their role in government and those who believe that such a thing is wrong an illegal. Of course these sorts of things take place at the national level as well as in every state. Religion, however, carries more weight in some places than others.
Take for example a bill that was recently introduced in the Texas House; a bill to ban discrimination against creationists. Now, one should remember that Texas is a very conservative state. The government here really doesn't do very much especially when it comes to government regulation. Which is what this is, government regulation of who can be hired and fired at colleges and universities. There are few environmental regulations. There is little in the way of regulation of the electricity market. There is no law banning discrimination on the basis of marital status or sexual orientation. Yet someone thinks that they can pass pro-creationist regulation.
This is par for the course among conservative politicians. They routinely lambast environmental, commercial, banking and civil rights laws as things the government has no business being involved in. Then claim that government regulation is bad period then in the next breath decide that the things they don't like should be banned.
I was very tempted to get into the whole theocracy thing here, but I will save that for another post.
There are some other interesting things that have been happening in Texas with regards to schools. Texas recently re-evaluated their textbooks standards and there was a lot of interesting debate. There is the usual racket of trying to teach that the standard models for evolution are weak as a way of letting creationism get a foot in the door. That is usually where it ends, but in Texas, the issue has gone beyond that. In Texas there is the Institute for Creation Research which aims to give out science degrees in creationism. Of course the certification board denied the request.
Seriously though, what does the certification board know about teaching and stuff. That was the message from the state legislature when they said that non-profits don't have to get certifications in order to give out degrees. This now lets any non-profit in Texas hand out diplomas, all as a specific response to the ICR.
Generally the drive to make science appear weak comes down to trying to make an argument for religion. Science has been so effective at discrediting religious texts that the religious folk want to do some fighting back. The problem is that they don't really understand or care about the arguments because that is not their goal. Their goal is to further religion regardless of the arguments.
Now, don't go thinking that any ole time religion is good enough for Texas Schools. The folks on the school board think that there might be too much of that nasty Muslim propaganda in our text books and maybe we should get rid of that.
Science and religion are not the only enemies in the textbooks, there is also history and politics. After all, if you have a nice opportunity to get rid of all those unsightly facts in your text books, why stop at evolution. McCarthy, Reagan, Nixon and Gingrich are about due for a good whitewash. Taxation, entitlements and economics are also hugely influential on the US political scene so it is no surprise that Reagonomics are to be lauded and Social Security is to be questioned. I could spend all day collecting links from Paul Krugman's blog about how the history and evolution of macroeconomics has been steered in an ever more conservative direction despite the facts, but I have other things to do.
Everyone likes to talk a good talk about how important education is to the US. Every president, governor and congress critter can talk about a commitment to education all day, but what does it matter if the low level officials who run the day to day stuff are more concerned with the religious and political gains they can make through the education system. How can we allow people who are so anti-intellectual and anti-science be in charge of our curricula. This daily show clip about this stuff is a bit enlightening.
The elephant in the room is, of course, the 1st amendment and how this is so obviously an effort to support religion in a government institution. Not to mention how it violates the retraining order about how Religion must stay 500 yards from science at all times.(about 5:15 in). I'm sure they will re-write that pretty soon though.
[1] I have liked this usage of the word ever since reading the Baroque Cycle series by Neil Stephenson. A long dry series of books that somehow managed to be interesting rather than tedious.
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