Well, certain ignoramuses who are taking over our educational system would ban Shakespeare, amend the actual history of the United States of America and completely abolish the basic sciences that took us to the moon and enabled us to send pictures of our naked girl friends to computer users all over the world.

We have had fine discussions here at Dagblog lately concerning tenure and the banning of books and the new Texas textbooks emerging on the primary educational market today.

I have attempted to discuss the issue of the devolution of our educational system at least fifty times in the last three years or so because basic tenets of science and the arts that once formed a bond amongst our political and educational leaders are evaporating as fast as voting rights across this nation.

I mean you could once start out a discussion of Physics_of_the_Impossible by Michio Kaku with certain tenets assumed.

You assume that light travels at 186,000 miles per second in a theoretical vacuum (remember the Tare on this number is not affected that much by atmosphere let alone space) and that nothing can go faster than the speed of light (except, except, except) , that time is relative, that space and time are somehow linked...

And with all of the wonders of the universe available per orbital telescopes and rockets with viewers actually reaching the end of our Solar System there is no general agreement amongst brilliant astrophysicists and such as far as deductions.

These hard working intellectuals get into real arguments concerning the workings of the universe.

But they all begin with certain assumptions.

Thus it has always been.

Now great minds 'throw out' some of these assumptions. But Einstein never dissed Newton as an idiot.

Our students must be introduced to Newtonian Physics before they can ever hope to grasp the nuances contained in General Relativity or Special Relativity.

Michio Kaku takes a look at prognostication. It is a fun read.

He says:

Look at the exponential explosion in the computer tech industry these days.

Every two years we double our tech.

What kind of tech might be available a century from now, a millennium from now or a thousand millennia from now?

Then he kind of does a Rummy.

We know what we know and sometimes we don't know what we don't know....

But you will gain nothing from reading this popular scientific tome if you are stuck believing that some god stood on the earth (yes in the beginning there was an earth with a great wind...) and threw a bunch of stars in the sky.

There is no real politics in Kaku's take.

He does not think humans should prepare for 10,000 years in the future—with the exception of reviewing policies related to atomic annihilation or pollution of course.

And now our present day geniuses, with the use of computer technology are able to perform basic triangulation (one technique for judging distances using two points to extrapolate distances by angle degrees) in order to judge distances.

Hell, computer software is already beginning to mirror giant brains with trillions of connections between neurons. A type of consciousness embedded in computers might become a reality of sorts—although there shall always be Platonic confusion over the issue of consciousness.

Well enough of this from someone who would have to retake 12^th grade physics in order to score decently on a modern day SAT.

Now I was watching Slum_Dog_Millionaire again.

What a film.

Toward the beginning of the film this poor poor orphaned child falls into the abyss of human excrement whilst contemplating eternity from a primitive outhouse seat.

By the end this film the genetically endowed piece of crap (from an Untouchable view point) wins the Indian version of Who_Wants_to_Be_a_Millionaire.

For me the funniest scenes involve the hero answering phones on a computer and attempting to answer customer questions regarding hardware problems.

I think I actually spoke with this guy, or at least his sister.

I believe that can happen.

There is a scene in Good Will Hunting that discusses some 19^th century Indian Savant and his great deeds.

Good students will eventually rebel against static thought anyway and reawaken at University—assuming it's not some pretend university established by some psychotic! Of course even then the ubermench will look around at his environs and leave for more fertile fields.

But the odds of generating good students, the odds of generating good minds, the odds of creating a new generation of thinkers goes down when governmental action imposes 12^th century scientific perspectives upon blank-slates.

We need good geologists to inform us as to what lies beneath our feet in terms of precious metals and potential energy sources and clean available water.

We need good biologists to inform us when a radical bacteria or virus threatens us with mass annihilation.

We need good chemists to inform us when our own fertilizers threaten the death of our farmlands.

We need good engineers to develop building materials that ensure our structures do not fall to bits due to 'acts of god' like earthquakes and tsunamis. (Earthquakes and tsunamis that might have originated in part due to human 'progress'.

We need good meteorologists to inform us when hurricanes or tornadoes threaten our local populations.

We need computer techs to help us develop software and hardware that enables our best scientists to warn us of impending doom.

We need the best agriculturists to ensure an adequate diet for our citizens.

Hell we are supposed to breed good historians so that we might be prevented from creating problems by repeating past ignominious behaviors!

I can go on an on here, as I usually do.

Science gives us the possibilities and the probabilities of human development.

But certain scientific assumptions should not be challenged by laymen who know not of what they speak.

Someone with a clerical degree from some school of divinity should not be consulted about geological inconsistencies concerning data received from some satellite orbiting a moon of Jupiter.

Religion should instill in the scientist some humanity in order to help them find goals for that development.

I can't find the link but today I read of some South Carolinian noting that his greatest distress lies in the fact that White Boys are emulating Black Boys' behaviors; wearing their pants down to their ankles and rapping and....whatever.

The radical religious right in this country is afraid that public education is simply indoctrinating their children and removing these tots from that old time religion.

The citizens feel that their world is being taken away from them. The youngsters are more interested in tweeting than praying. The youngsters are more interested in pornography than the family as the most important social structure.

The citizens feel that old values are evaporating in an internet filled with too many new ideas coming too fast and too furiously.

If we, as a nation, lead our children at an early age to eschew science in favor of pagan rituals and paradigms, we are screwed!

See also:

http://dagblog.com/reader-blogs/do-you-believe-magic-10991

http://dagblog.com/arts/ecce-homo-10407