I've been feeling really crabby lately and I don't know why. I just had a great little vacation, I saw Carol Burnett, we've reserved the beach cottage and Pres. Loony B is gone. I should be really happy, and I was yesterday all day while I was watching all the inauguration stuff. But Xup's post the other day and the news about the Texas School Board and the teaching of evolution have gotten me all riled up.~
What I said on Xup's post was: "Well at least we shower, use deodorant, brush our teeth and go to the dentist." But what I WANTED to say was: I don't think a bunch of stinky rotten-teethed pansy-assed Europeans should be dissing my country because if it weren't for us they'd all be speaking German. But that's SO WRONG. And so base. An intelligent argument would have been that Americans are so fat because of really poor city planning. Most European cites and towns are more village-based, with homes being located around the shops and what not, which encourages walking. I would almost be risking my life to walk to either of the two grocery stores nearest my house. Walking somewhere to buy clothes is unimaginable. Even if there were sidewalks and some safe way to cross the busy streets, it's usually 100° all summer. Anyway, if we're so horrible, why do they watch all our movies and TV shows?
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The Texas School Board is being asked by the teachers (teachers of SCIENCE) of Texas to take out the mandate to teach the "strengths and weaknesses" of the theory of evolution. Their main opponent, a "social conservative" said something like, "If they are afraid to teach the weaknesses, what are they afraid of? That sounds like a hidden agenda." What? WHAT? The hidden "agenda" is 1) We do not teach religion in public schools and 2) We do not want our students to go out into the world and be thought of as ignorant. Not only that but this "social conservative," on THE SCHOOL BOARD, home schools her kids!!!! Why on earth is she on the school board if she doesn't even use the public schools? Everything about that is super retarded.
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I understand that some people are Bible literalists, and my goodness what faith, but I am not, and the science is out there all over the place. It's even in our DNA. I say we keep the schools secular and let the parents teach their children religion at home. And not allow people to be on the school board who do not partake of the public school system.
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I feel a lot better now. Maybe my crabbiness will go away.
4 comments:
Grumpy wumpy are we? I am in complete agreement about the church and school, religion has no place in our schools. Here in Québec we fought long and hard to get the church out of just about every facet of society since the church had control of just about everything. As for the person who is on the school board and has no stake in the school system. That shouln't be!
If we allowed a religion that follows the Bible in our schools, then we'd probably have to allow all the other religions (and their books) as well. Parents should share their faith with their kids and school teachers should focus on academics.
I think faith should be taught in families, not in school.
As for the other comment, I'm not going there.
I'm sorry my blog post got you grumpy and riled up -- although getting riled up isn't always a bad thing. I really don't think these people were trashing the USA as a whole -- afterall they've all visited and/or lived there for a period of time and I'm sure loved most of it. They were only expressing their shock at the size of America's homes, cars and meals and people. And it really wasn't just exclusively the US, because Canada has the same problems. I have relatives that come to visit regularly from Europe and they're always amazed at how big everything is here -- from the geography to the food. I've read books written by UK or European authors and whenever a character visits North American they alway point out how HUGE everything is. That's just who we are. In many respects it's a problem. We use up too many natural resources. Over half our population is dangerously obese. We've come to see these things as the norm. To the point that when my daughter, who is slim, has her check-ups, they all freak out because she's "below average". 50 years ago she would have been considered perfectly normal. It's a problem we don't even see anymore and sometimes it's good to have these things pointed out, I think. It's great that you're a proud American and you have much to be proud of. I don't think anyone would dispute that. But calling North Americans to task for some of our excesses, I don't think is such a bad thing. I hope you're feeling better now. It's been a pretty exciting week.
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