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July 28, 2005 Science education controlled by politics is worthless. It does not serve the scientifically apt pupil. It does not serve the religionists who do not want science to play a roll in their lives. The scientifically apt pupil gains textbooks that replace evolution with euphemisms like ‘change over time’ and every reference to evolution purged. They will never be exposed to the advanced science education that they will need to continue in the path of science, regardless of their religious beliefs. The people who do not believe in science or specific aspects of science are forced to either endure education that they are unwilling to accept or absent themselves from certain chapters. There is a solution to this conundrum. It is not getting everyone up in arms about an apparent scientific weak-point and having it diluted until it is meaningless. It is not political activism against ideas like Intelligent Design. It is very simple. Education needs to be configurable. The major ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solutions such as SAP, PeopleSoft and Oracle Apps are all configurable. Software that people use on a daily basis would be useless if it was not configurable. There is an emphasis on textbooks in current education. This is warranted because textbooks have made the task of education much easier to standardize and understand the wealth of knowledge that needs to be transferred to all students. There are advances in the world and there are setbacks. Advances in computers and databases have made large amounts of data available to any who choose to work with them. Setbacks in politics have created activism that indicates that science is a democratic process. This is incorrect. Science is science no matter how many people vote that certain concepts are unreal or illegitimate. These two factors can work together. It requires the elimination of the textbook. Textbook manufacturers are constantly pressured to create RC (Religiously Correct) science text books. As mentioned earlier the only end result of this is a poor education for everyone involved. Every student in science classes should have a notebook computer. Movement in this direction has already been initiated in some schools as indicated in the article : “Laptop Or Textbook” This can be arranged in a variety of ways. The notebook computers can be part of the classroom or an even more equitable solution would be that students have school computers as a requirement. The upside of this would be that the schools should never be required to purchase textbooks again. These computers would be connected through a network to a teaching system database that operates in many ways like a textbook but can store even more information. At the beginning of the year students and/or parents indicate their preferences regarding what they want to learn, include their religious preferences and possibly any other information necessary to form a curriculum for specific science courses. Then the science teacher becomes a guide and advisor as the students work through the curriculum. Students can only be held responsible for subject matter they are exposed to through their computerized textbooks. Students that want to explore topics in further detail will have an entire database of lessons and facts to work with. Students that do not want to be exposed to specific topics need not be bothered by them; however, there would be minimum requirements regarding topics that students need to cover in order to have ‘passed’ a course. This system would work well for high school or college with the provision that if you are a college major in biology regardless of your religious preference you must understand the Theory of Evolution. Disagreeing with a subject does not mean you must not know about a subject. If someone is issued a degree in Biology they must have a working knowledge of what is expected of a person holding that degree. In the case of biology knowledge of Evolution is a requirement. Such a database-based textbook is not impossible to create. It requires three simple objectives: 1) A serious (not political) effort that education should be improved while respecting everyone’s beliefs as much as possible, 2) A relatively small team of programmers, scientists and writers to get together to create the database-based textbook, 3) Realistically, a rather modest sum of money compared to the lawsuits and cost of bitterness on both sides when either side wins politically in the forum of science education. I’d only be too glad to work on such a project should anyone think the idea is worth merit and can pay me enough that I can continue to pay the bills. A project like this is worth more than money – it is a project to believe in for the improvement of the future. ------------ About the author Alexander Flynn: I am currently a Senior Consultant who writes ABAP code in SAP and .NET code in Visual Studio.NET in New Jersey. Email: rhadamygg@hotmail.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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