Kansas will institutionalize stupidity - again.

LA Times May 6, 2005.

Science - it's what your neighbors believe and the voters elect people to enforce, not what scientists test and establish. Ask the voters in Kansas. You can find them behind their gigantic white crosses.

Kathy Martin was elected to the Kansas state board of education to be the swing vote on replacing the science of Evolution with the religion of Intelligent Design. [I guess their "design" has to be intelligent. The Kansans damned sure aren't.

"Evolution is a great theory, but it is flawed," said Martin, 59, a retired science and elementary school teacher who is presiding over the hearings. "There are alternatives. Children need to hear them". We can't ignore that our nation is based on Christianity - not science."

Don't you just love faith-based enforced ignorance?

The lesson - don't hire students from Kansas. They are being trained to be stupid. But it isn't just students in Kansas.

Kansas isn't alone in the debate over teaching evolution.

Local school boards in Georgia and Pennsylvania recently voted to alter their science curriculums and provide for the teaching of alternative theories. Both moves are being challenged in court. And the Ohio Department of Education passed a measure ensuring that teachers could hold classes that challenged the theory of evolution.

At least nine states, including Kansas, are considering bills that would affect how evolution is taught in their schools, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Here is another article on the Kansas idiocy from Capital Hill Blue. Faith-based science is bad science and worse religion.

The students taught this strange stuff will make decent cannon fodder for wars of the future, but their leaders will have obtained real eductions. Those leaders will probably not be Americans.

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Addendum May 11th

DemFromCT over at the Last Hurrah has a good story on the actual proceedings of the Kansas Board of (?)Education.

Essentially the religious extremists are holding some form of hearings strictly for appearances sake before the vote to teach religion instead of science in the science classes. They haven't bothered to read the science-favorable readings on how to teach science in science classes. The ultimate decision they will make is foreordained.

But Hey! They want to teach religion, not science. We all know that no one needs the facts to teach religion, do we? Facts?? They are something that only those scientists get wrapped around, and they are much too complicated for mere religious people. Just ask the retired science teacher and Board Member Kathy Martin. She admits she has read the material. Since she keeps a large cross in her yard, there is no doubt where she gets her information.