Education Woes

Well, today's good news is that Democratic victories in gubenatorial races in the major states of Virginia and New Jersey are a precursor of what will happen in 2006. As I have been saying since November 3, 2004, Republicans in their drunken orgy of power mongering will so turn off the electorate that we will take back the House and Senate. Democrats can then set our sights on righting the wrongs of November 2, 2004 either through impeachment or by simply rendering this administration meaningless. What better indication do we need that Republicans and their unholy alliance with the so-called Religious Right have led this country down the wrong path than to look at the state of education? Remember, this is the party that wanted to eliminate the Department of Education. When their leadership realized that this showed their disdain for the middle class a little too obviously, they shifted gears and tried to get a voucher law passed to help drain critical resources from the public schools and transfer public tax money into their elite boarding academies and southern "Christian" (read: white) schools. On the same day that the Chicago Tribune reports that average student test scores have not improved in 5 years, and as tax money is being wasted on a publicity stunt of over 3,ooo White House employees having to return to class to learn the basics of ethics, that most Republican of states, Kansas, adopts new "science" standards that are actually the opposite of science. In their zeal to impose their religious stories as fact, Kansas redefines “science” so that it’s not limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena. Wonder if they would be OK with teaching that it is just as likely that the so-called intelligent design came from aliens (maybe even liberal aliens - ooh, how scary!) as posited by numerous sci-fi writers. That would call their bluff and show that this ridiculous ID smokescreen is simply another way to try to force creationism into the schools as something other than fiction.