This is "Teaching?"

This is TEACHING?

Some of the 35 Dover ninth-graders who heard about intelligent design Tuesday couldn't explain the concept afterward.

The controversial statement didn't define intelligent design, and school administrators who read it didn't answer questions.

Yet the law firm championing the case for the Dover Area School District touted it as a "revolution in evolution."

the statement read included the sentences: "Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's views. The school leaves the discussion of the origins of life to individual students and their families."

After students heard the statement, they were told that if they had any questions, they should speak to their parents or contact district administrators, students said.

that's the best they can do? If they can't even give a basic definition of ID, then why mention it at all? [Hint: Because they *KNOW* that ID is creationism in disguise, and they WILL lose the lawsuit, and probably their jobs, if they actually defined it.]

we've had almost 50 years of understanding how to teach through the techniques of Bloom's Taxonomy, a system proven to be extremely successful.

why the hell did they throw all of that out?

*sigh*

if i found out that superintendents did something like that in *my* child's school, you can be DAMN sure i'd be filing a lawsuit. 

one student really got the point: "A couple of them asked why (the board and administration) still felt the need to read something that their parents could have read to them," [science teacher Jennifer Miller] said.

quotes taken from The York Daily Record.

on a related note, there's a collection of brilliant (note: said in *extremely* sarcastic tone) letters to the editor to a wisconsin paper from a large number of people who quite seriously simply do not get it at all.  they've been fed lies, they're repeating lies, and the lies are hurting their children.

How The Onion reacted to the Cobb County sticker judgement

This week's Onion talks about the Georgia evolution textbook stickers in its "What Do You Think?" section:

Last week, a U.S. district judge ordered a Georgia school district to remove stickers reading, "Evolution is a theory, not a fact" from its textbooks. What do you think?

"The thing is, they're right. Evolution is nothing more than a well-supported, predictive, scientifically rigorous theory."
- Jered Garza, Driver

"If you don't believe in creationism, then how do you explain the fact that I do, smart guy?"
- Carlton Fuller, Teacher

"Good. Now could New York please take the sticker off my literature textbook that says Surrealism is just a school of thought often in conflict with Abstractism?"
- Melanie Burton, Systems Analyst

"Maybe now a judge will press Georgia schools to remove the 'Mr. Yuk' stickers from books by black authors."
- Susan McKinney, Painter

"Man, I gotta get one of those stickers for my guitar case. That'd be awesome."
- Danny Hale Plumber

"I hope they replaced the old stickers with new ones that read, 'Do not burn.'"
- Brad Dawson, Novelist

you can't make up stuff like this...

From CNN: Poll: Nation split on Bush as uniter or divider