Category: Politics

Paul Nelson: My new un-poster child

As Pharyngula reported earlier, UMM’s InterVarsity Christian Fellowship played host to Paul Nelson of the pro-intelligent design/creationist Discovery Institute (I’m not dignifying Nelson and the DI with links – you can Google for them if you care).

I have lots I could say (I have several pages of notes), and I’ll try to get to at least some of that later, but I figured I needed to say at least a little bit now to tide Brent over until I can provide a fuller report.

For now I’ll simply say that Paul Nelson is my new poster child for why degrees really don’t mean half of what academics try to make of them. He may have a PhD from the University of Chicago (which, on the surface, is about as good as credentials get), but he’s not very wise. He’s extremely clever, but not very wise. WeatherGirl‘s grandfather had to leave school at 14 to help his family, but was one of the wisest people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, and was certainly heads and shoulders beyond tonight’s speaker.

Some observations:

  • It was pretty scary to see how clever a speaker he was, because it certainly makes clear how powerful the forces of ignorance can be. We had best not underestimate these people.
  • On the other hand, I was amazed at how much Nelson was willing to concede. (He totally believes, for example, in micro-evolution, but will not accept that lots of micro-evolution adds up to macro-evolution.) There’s an almost desparate feel to ceding so much ground, and it seems a clear sign of how much the many successes of scientific research have carved into the many “unexplainable mysteries” that people like this so desparately need.
  • Our UMM students did a great job of representing the forces of good sense and scientific reason. The bulk of the Q&A was driven by excellent student questions, and while the faculty did get their oars in now and again, the students did a great job and arguably didn’t need us much :-). Well done!
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Morris needs to re-pass the school levy: A letter to the editor

The following is a letter to the editor that I intend to send to our local paper regarding the current school funding issues (also here). Comments and questions always welcome. (I should mention that as an anti-spamming measure, all comments have to be approved before they appear on the page, and unfortunately you’re not given any immediate feedback to that effect. Don’t worry – your comment has gone into the system and will be approved and appear shortly.)

As I teach, my working assumption is that my students will go on to do interesting and important things. While I may not always be right, any other assumption has a strong tendency to be self-fulfilling, and I’m just not willing to yield that ground.

As a member of this community and a parent of a child in MAES, my working assumption for our children is the same: They are going to go on to do interesting and important things. They need our support for that dream to come true, and frankly we need them. We need them to develop into the kinds of people that can help our community grow and thrive in an environment where rural communities continue to struggle. We need their help in managing the many challenges that we’ve yet to dream of but which will surely present themselves.

Challenging students to meet these expectations and become leaders of tomorrow is hard work. It requires more than just marking time in a classroom. It requires class sizes that allow teachers the time and space to get to know kids and tailor their educational experience. It requires a broad range of curricular and co-curricular opportunities so that students can find and develop their individual sets of skills. It requires faculty and staff who believe they have the support of their community.

We are blessed with some exceptional teachers and staff in our district who are willing to put in enormous effort and hours because they believe in the importance of our children and in their ability to make a difference. Our students need those teachers, and those teachers need our support. One nearly certain outcome of the deep budget cuts that are being proposed is a serious blow to the morale of our district’s staff, and an unsupported, dispirited staff is much less capable of challenging our children to find what they’re capable of.

For these reasons I strongly oppose the vast majority of the proposed cuts to our school district budget. Instead we should be exploring alternative approaches to resolving the current budget problems, including the re-passing of the levy our community agreed to in the year 2000. While I realize that a levy wouldn’t go into effect immediately, it would certainly give the School Board much more flexibility in how they approach the short term issues, and it would provide the long term support that our schools and our community need.

I would encourage those who wish to learn more about those alternatives to attend school board meetings, follow developments in these pages, and visit MorrisQualitySchools.org for more information.

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