Trump’s Anti-Science Campaign

[MarkFL]

Trump’s Anti-Science Campaign

I find this particularly disturbing:

As if all this weren’t enough, Trump has argued for downsizing the Department of Education and said that the U.S. invests too much money in K-12 schooling. He has suggested that he might appoint Ben Carson—a young-Earth, anti-evolution creationist—to advise him on educational reform. He has called the National Institutes of Health “terrible,” and has said that he would eliminate the E.P.A. In April, the science journal Nature reported that his anti-immigrant tirades could be hindering efforts to recruit good scientists and students to the U.S.

 

[Josiah]

I support the national government getting out of education (it's a violation of the Constitution). I think eliminating the national EPA is probably a good idea, too. Obviously, I don't support reducing funding for scientific research.

 

[MoreCoffee]

Surely one cannot wish for Federal taxes to be withdrawn from education funding.

 

[Josiah]

Surely one cannot wish for Federal taxes to be withdrawn from education funding.

ahha. Because such money is never "given" without directives, controls - the national government taking over local education, which the constitution indicates is a STATE matter.

 

[MoreCoffee]

The constitution was written in the 18th and 19th centuries, it is the 21st century now.

 

[tango]

The constitution was written in the 18th and 19th centuries, it is the 21st century now.

This kind of reasoning just ends up going round in circles. If the constitution is deemed no longer relevant it needs to be changed using the processes described. To just cast it aside because it is deemed irrelevant leaves the nation at the mercy of whoever is in charge at the time.

As for government funding of schools it would be nice if it could be free of government interference. Sadly politicians of all flavors are known for the desire to meddle. Personally I'd rather not see central government involved in education at all - in the UK I've seen governments of both persuasions endlessly tinkering with things to the point that teachers complain they don't have time to actually teach any more. Of course some teachers don't like league tables because they aren't very good and some teachers don't like administration because it highlights how useless they are, but when increasing numbers of teachers are complaining that they spend more time doing paperwork than actually teaching there's probably an issue somewhere. A couple of people I know personally who are (or have been) teachers describe very similar problems, specifically government requirements that every little thing be documented to the point that something like a creative drama class can't actually be very creative because the teachers are expected to plan in advance what will be done with the lesson, broken down into 5-minute sections.

Throw in the endless testing and the way classes end up doing little more than teaching children how to pass the test and little more (our resident mathematician [MENTION=4]MarkFL[/MENTION] mentioned in another thread how his nieces complained that they "aren't required to know this") and it becomes clear how education is becoming devalued. If all children can do is pass one test but can't think around a new problem that they weren't told about in advance, how will they ever cope with life when it does sometimes throw a curveball? In the UK exam grades rose relentlessly amidst constant accusations of standards being lowered, yet despite so many more kids scoring A-grades that a new top-grade (A*) was introduced (there was subsequently talk of a new A** being introduced, as so many A* grades were being awarded) it's more and more common to see people entering the workforce lacking the most basic numeracy and literacy skills. I remember seeing three very loud and mouthy teenagers getting on the bus and their apparent leader asking (loudly enough for the entire bus to hear) "Right, I want three 40p tickets", followed by a slight pause and "How much is that?". That's right, this loud-mouthed young person was quite happy for the entire bus to know she couldn't work out 3x40 by herself.

Having seen the results of governments using education as a political football I'd be quite happy to see them back away from it completely.

 

[MoreCoffee]

The division of powers between states and the federal government in the USA ought not to restricted by 18th & 19th century notions of communication and transportation.

 

[MarkFL]

I won't argue that there aren't many things broken with our educational system, however just to state that too much is invested in primary/secondary education seems drastically misguided to me. We should probably look first at how this investment is being spent rather than reducing it.

 

[tango]

The division of powers between states and the federal government in the USA ought not to restricted by 18th & 19th century notions of communication and transportation.

In which case the constitution needs to be updated. Either the constitution is a framework restricting the power of government, or it isn't. If it's relevant it needs to be followed; if it is not relevant it needs to be amended or abolished. Given the reason the constitution was written in the first place it would send the irony meter off the scale for a government of any persuasion to seek to simply ignore it completely.

 

[tango]

I won't argue that there aren't many things broken with our educational system, however just to state that too much is invested in primary/secondary education seems drastically misguided to me. We should probably look first at how this investment is being spent rather than reducing it.

I won't argue with that. What I've seen of fields where government has a large interest is that an increase in spending usually results in an increase in wastage. The healthcare system in the UK received huge amounts of extra funding during the last Labour administration and yet waiting lists didn't seem to get any shorter and the quality of care seemed much the same as before. Hospitals did seem be to able to find the money for artwork and more administrators, sadly the number of people doing the actual caring showed no obvious signs of improvement. The general management of the NHS remained stubbornly inefficient, with patients criticised for not showing to the appointment they rescheduled a week ahead of time and levels of bureaucratic waste that would make your head spin (I saw a number of emails that were supposed to be internal but were sent to me in error and frankly the managerial uselessness was staggering).

We certainly should look at what is being done before we arbitrarily slash funding, the question is how best to objectively look at things. Given the hugely partisan nature of just about everything in the US it's clear that any body associated with one party will look to demonstrate that everything is wonderful while a body associated with the other party will look to demonstrate just how bad everything is and how it needs to change. Exam results can't be relied upon given the way children are increasingly taught to pass tests rather than gain a broad knowledge.

Perhaps it would be better to start from the ground up, look at how best to deliver a quality education (recognising that some children are best suited to a highly academic environment and others are best suited to a more practical/vocational environment) and look to rebuild rather than tinkering at the edges.

 

[Josiah]

The constitution was written in the 18th and 19th centuries, it is the 21st century now.

I live in the USA (not Australia). The USA is a CONSTITUTIONAL Republic. Yes, it was written in the 18th Century (and amended several times since) but IMO the reality that it still is in place is a tribute to it's greatness, not a mandate that it be chucked.

I NEVER said that government should de-fund education (although I didn't say it should fund it, either, lol).... ONLY that Education is NOT a function of the National Goverment but of the STATES, so any funding (and thus control!!!!) comes from the STATE (which is much closer to the people and therefore, IMO, more able to govern this). The National Govenment in the 1960's began spending money it didn't have on a STATE function in its quest to control things outside of its authority (a process largely begun by FDR in the 1930's).

Now, if Australia wants to ignore whatever Constitution it may or may not have..... take over powers it doesn't have.... stomp all over local government.... that's NONE OF MY BUSINESS since I'm not a citizen of Australian and don't live there.


So.... I'm not opposed to Trump's desire to return to the Constitution at this point (Education). I'm very opposed to TRUMP (as I am to CLINTON) but then that's another issue pursued in OTHER threads, not this one.



- Josiah


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[Ackbach]

Trump’s Anti-Science Campaign

I find this particularly disturbing:

Yeah, I can't get too worked up about it. Neither creationism nor evolution are scientific (their ultimate claims are not testable by scientific methods) - they're both faiths. And faith is by no means anti-intellectual. I'm not in favor of ditching the public schools. I just think they should be made to compete with private schools on an equal footing: only the people using the public schools should be paying for them through their property taxes. Everyone else should have no such tax (not vouchers, as that money has gone through the government system, and therefore the government can muscle in on the schools accepting it) so they can afford lots more schools. I object to paying for schools that teach things diametrically opposed to what I believe (that is, the public schools teach, by the nearly universal exclusion of the Christian faith, that God doesn't matter).

NIH and FDA and other such institutions have their place, but they're not doing it very well right now. The FDA lets in way too many dangerous things that have not been sufficiently vetted. Politics has dangerously overruled science in an uncountably infinite number of ways, ranging from global "swarming" to DDT to medicine.

As for the EPA, I'm on the fence. I believe in conservation, but not environmentalism. We are stewards of God's creation, we do not worship it. God created us to have loving dominion over it. So there should be checks and balances on what we can do, but the EPA has gone way overboard.

 

[MarkFL]

I don't really want to debate this point (at least not in this thread) and while I do agree with the scientific community that creationism is non-scientific, evolution by natural selection is one of the best substantiated theories in the history of science, supported by evidence from a wide variety of scientific disciplines, including paleontology, geology, genetics and developmental biology.

 

[MoreCoffee]

In which case the constitution needs to be updated. Either the constitution is a framework restricting the power of government, or it isn't. If it's relevant it needs to be followed; if it is not relevant it needs to be amended or abolished. Given the reason the constitution was written in the first place it would send the irony meter off the scale for a government of any persuasion to seek to simply ignore it completely.

The constitution does not restrict the powers of government. It divides them between state and federal governments. The parts that may restrict the power of government are mainly in the amendments. Chiefly in the amendments that are called the bill of rights. There are some implied and some explicit curtailments on government power but education is not among them.

 

[MoreCoffee]

I don't really want to debate this point (at least not in this thread) and while I do agree with the scientific community that creationism is non-scientific, evolution by natural selection is one of the best substantiated theories in the history of science, supported by evidence from a wide variety of scientific disciplines, including paleontology, geology, genetics and developmental biology.

All but a few in the religious community agree that biological evolution is well attested by many disciplines in the physical and biological sciences.

 

[tango]

The constitution does not restrict the powers of government. It divides them between state and federal governments. The parts that may restrict the power of government are mainly in the amendments. Chiefly in the amendments that are called the bill of rights. There are some implied and some explicit curtailments on government power but education is not among them.

I'm not sure where this is going. Whether government (local, state or federal) is the best placed entity to provide education doesn't seem to be a function of this. We got onto the constitution only for you to say the curbs on government power don't include education anyway.

As for whether or not the constitution forbids the federal government being involved in education, I can't say I know it well enough to comment, I'm not a US citizen so only know so much about it. But for what it's worth in general I would support things like education being managed as locally as possible rather than as a political football by a remote government.

 

[Stravinsk]

Trump’s Anti-Science Campaign

I find this particularly disturbing:

As if all this weren’t enough, Trump has argued for downsizing the Department of Education and said that the U.S. invests too much money in K-12 schooling. He has suggested that he might appoint Ben Carson—a young-Earth, anti-evolution creationist—to advise him on educational reform. He has called the National Institutes of Health “terrible,” and has said that he would eliminate the E.P.A. In April, the science journal Nature reported that his anti-immigrant tirades could be hindering efforts to recruit good scientists and students to the U.S.

I read through most of the article and skimmed through the last few paragraphs. There's nothing there that I find particularly disturbing - but then I don't accept the application of the word "science" to everything that author is concerned about - even if he is a scientist and an expert in his particular field of science - many of the subjects brought up are not in his area of expertise and are not proven or at best some of the conclusions are leading when it comes to that burden of proof.

Insofar as education - I don't have any problem with de-funding it entirely. In the case of the USA in particular, throwing more money at Education has, if memory serves me, seen an overall *lowering* of the national IQ over the last number of decades. It seems they are getting what they want. Dumber citizens are easier to manipulate and control. But even if this were not the case - I don't see the need for some bureaucrats to decide what and how a child is educated. They have already meddled too much and much of the common history stories (to take but one example) are filled with lies and half truths. It's not a mistake and I believe it is purposely intentional to make better corporate citizens and taxpayers who know no different than what they are told - to serve interests that are ultimately not theirs.

 

[MoreCoffee]

I'm not sure where this is going. Whether government (local, state or federal) is the best placed entity to provide education doesn't seem to be a function of this. We got onto the constitution only for you to say the curbs on government power don't include education anyway.

As for whether or not the constitution forbids the federal government being involved in education, I can't say I know it well enough to comment, I'm not a US citizen so only know so much about it. But for what it's worth in general I would support things like education being managed as locally as possible rather than as a political football by a remote government.

The best place to provide education is within the family. Outsourcing education to schools is an artefact of the complexity of our society, the way work is arranged, and pressure on families to conform to educational standards defined and demanded by society through government agencies.

 

[onlyme]

The best place to provide education is within the family. Outsourcing education to schools is an artefact of the complexity of our society, the way work is arranged, and pressure on families to conform to educational standards defined and demanded by society through government agencies.

Homeschooling has become a big thing in some places; and it used to be that public schoolteachers were supposed to be in loco parentis; but now they are so often regarded as the legitimate hammers of politicians looking for easy, young targets.

 

[MoreCoffee]

Homeschooling has become a big thing in some places; and it used to be that public schoolteachers were supposed to be in loco parentis; but now they are so often regarded as the legitimate hammers of politicians looking for easy, young targets.

The principle of subsidiarity ought to encourage people to handle education within the family or small community (extended family or village). But the way nations and cities and so forth are structured tends to make families unable to educate their own children to the standards expected in society thus towns, cities, states, nations run schools and fund them by taxation.