EDITOR’S VIEWPOINT/Why Johnny can’t think
Everybody’s favorite pastime is everyone else’s business, and nowhere is that more evident than in the battles over secondary school textbooks. Clearly, we are a nation of busybodies, zealously inserting our righteous ideas into other people’s lives. Of course, our justifications are always noble, whether we are demanding that textbooks only use politically correct words and ideas, or ensuring that our religious beliefs are presented equally in a science class.
For several decades, both liberals and conservatives have been self-appointed textbook editors, and the amoral publishers are only too happy to comply. For example, last month the Texas Board of Education agreed to require publishers of health textbooks to change phrases such as “when two people marry” to “when a man and woman marry.” Unhealthy words such as bacon, butter and French fries have been blacklisted in California textbooks, according to “The Language Police,” a book published last year that includes more than 500 words that have been cleansed from textbooks.
All the monkeying around with textbooks seems misplaced if you consider that education is a means, not an end. Education is more than preparing us to make a living, although that is why many people go to college or trade school. Education should not be limited to a set of instructions on how to be a lawyer, doctor or teacher, but rather a catalyst to learning more.
The value of education is in learning how to search for our own thoughts, which unfortunately, has become a luxury for most of us. Rather than think about how we are performing our jobs, deadlines and schedules propel us toward familiar ways to react. As a result, when we should be thinking, we often resort to visceral, emotional reactions as opposed to rational, much more scientific thought.
These circumstances present the ideal conditions for those who would challenge Darwin’s theory of evolution in hopes of inserting other “theories” to explain the origins of life. Most of us have forgotten what we learned in science classes — especially that a scientific theory is based on a method of experimentation. Those who are rallying to include a revamped religious-based creationism theory (now called intelligent design) in science textbooks are relying on us not to recall that scientific principal.
We have become a nation of warriors battling over the ideas that separate us. And, as in all wars, from Belfast to Baghdad, we are dragging our children along with us to prolong our ideological crusades. I don’t mind the changes in textbooks as much as I fear that not enough of our children are developing curious minds capable of independent thought. It’s bad enough that Johnny can’t read; it will be far worse if he can’t think, either.