Teaching Ignorance

Did anyone else come across this article in yesterday's New York Times? It seems that, not content with promulgating their absurd antipathy to evolutionary science, the "creationists" in several states are now seeking to include their rejection of the science of climate change in school curricula. I tend to attribute most of this country's problems to its long-standing starvation of the basic education system for its citizens. The willful ignorance of much of the electorate has led us into the deplorable state in which we find ourselves today. Too many voters, it seems to me, are led by the nose to vote plainly against their own interest because they lack the essential skills of critical thought and readily accept the lies and half-truths that are fed to them; and then turn around and blame those they have elected.

Where once we might be able to attribute this to a "starve the beast" attitude toward education (a process that now, after fifty years and more, has produced what was perhaps the desired result--an easily manipulable citizenry,) we are now treated to the spectacle of people in power who want to go one step further: to actually teach ignorance in the schools as though it were knowledge. The fact they they have a base of support and are not simply laughed out of court should surely be enough to dismay all right-thinking--sorry, make that "thinking"--people. Whither these United States of America, when so many of these states capitulate to the fear-mongering, religion-driven agenda of the willfully ignorant? Their passionate dedication to the cause of ignorance itself may well be the end of all of us.