Creationism in school. It's not just for Kansas anymore.

You get the best stuff from PZ Myers. He sends us off to DefCon Blog for this wonderful bit of information:

Last week, Texas Governor Rick Perry appointed Don McLeroy to head the State Board of Education. Unfortunately for Texas schoolchildren, McLeroy has, for years, fought against the teaching of fact-based science in public schools, instead casting vote after vote in favor of his religious ideology.

Yup. And it gets worse. McLeroy is anti-birth control, anti-sex education (if it teaches anything but abstinence-only) and anti-abortion. From the Austin Statesman:

As chair, McLeroy leads a board of 10 Republicans and five Democrats. Divisions on the board aren't just partisan. McLeroy, a self-described social conservative, is one of eight Republicans who vote as a bloc on nearly all issues. He has a reputation for civility even while casting votes that are based more on ideology than on science or facts.

In 2001, McLeroy and a majority of the board rejected the only Advanced Placement textbook for high school environmental science because its views on global warming and other events didn't comport with the beliefs of the board majority. The book wasn't factual and was anti-American and anti-Christian, the majority claimed. Meanwhile, dozens of colleges and universities were using the textbook, including Baylor University, the nation's largest Baptist college.

In 2003, McLeroy voted against approving biology textbooks that included a full-scale scientific account of evolutionary theory. The books were approved.

McLeroy seems stranded in a Beaver Cleaver universe that is light years from the reality of today's schools.

Y'all gather that in. This is, as Bad Astronomy points out:

Brilliant! This guy doesn’t understand the most basic principles of biology, and he’s going to chair the State Board of Education. And hey, if he doesn’t understand something, why should it be taught at all?

Ah yes... religious fundamentalism. It's all in the book. The only book. Life must be so easy for the likes of McLeroy.

Get out the popcorn. This is going to be as good as Kansas.

And Now For Something Completely Different.

In 1993 a post Jungian psychiatrist named James Hillman and a writer named Michael Ventura published a book entitiled "We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World's Getting Worse".

Library Journal as quoted at Amazon. "Although traditional therapy assumes that healthy individuals make for a healthy world, Hillman ( Blue Fire , LJ 10/1/89) and Ventura ( Shadow Dancing in the U.S.A. , LJ 10/1/85) contend that therapy encourages self-preoccupation, leaving no attention or energy for the woes of the outside world...Political apathy, a dying environment, and an inability to form real relationships are among the ills resulting from this solipsism."

Some interesting quotes and some equally interesting commentary can be found here.

I think they make their case.

Except I'm not sure they couldn't have cast a wider net.

Because we've also had a hundred (or more) years of the pursuit of higher education as a self-evident good and the world has gotten worse.

Discuss.