Evolving Education

A recent post on the Made in Texas blog discusses one of the most prominent hurdles in fundamental education, teaching intelligent design or evolution.  There is no doubt that the Texas education system is in the lime light now days, and for all the wrong reasons it seems.  Recent budget cuts have proven that keeping businesses in Texas is more important that the future of our children. This could prove fatal in the near future; the same jobs that come to Texas because of our supply of highly skilled and intelligent workers may soon leave because of a failing education system. Now, the information that children are being taught is being screened before it ever reaches a classroom.  I believe that the strengths and flaws of both creationism and intelligent design, however unscientific, should be taught. With the current budget cuts, students are being deprived of enough, I do not believe that opposing ideas should also be excluded. I think that if both theories are taught, it will teach children from an early age to depend on their own reasoning and logic, not an outdated and politically pushed textbook or the teacher reading from it. I think that it is sad that schooling has come down to one or the other, not both.

Being one of the more conservative states, the lines between church and state are often blurred, and legally so. Separation of church and state is a commonly used phrase that never actually appears in the Constitution. It was first used by Thomas Jefferson in 1802, in a letter written to a Baptist Parish where he said that a “wall of separation” had been established to protect the church from any government oppression. This was a phrase used to exclusively establish a protective barrier for the church against an oppressive government, today it is used the other way around; to keep the church out of the affairs of the state.  Either way, where ever the theories comes from, I think it is terrible that one source, one government has the ultimate judgment as to what children will be taught. That just teaches children to be dependent on the provider of the information, and less inquisitive. Isn’t that what Thomas Jefferson was trying to avoid, one omnipresent force squashing opposing views?