``has anyone done a study of the empirical links between the rises of climate-change denialism, anti-evolution thinking, and pro-life positions in the US on the one hand and the decline of US education (no child left behind, etc.) on the other?'' Jim Devine
------------ Not that I know of, but I think I can sketch the connections. Texas and much of the US South has been in an historically significant drought for several years in a row. You would think climate change denial would be down. Meanwhile much of the same regions have been hit over and over with ferocious hurricanes and tornatoes---again of historically significant, i.e. abnormal. I suspect all the ideological points mentioned above are up, along with the race-culture-economic wars against black and various immigrant communities. Yes, these are up almost everywhere, but I suspect much more so in the South and Southwest. Here is a drought map: http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/ It's hard to be empirical, because empiricism automatically excludes many of the social-political factors or ideological schemes that form a mind set. However, you can study these factors and changes by watching and listening to the political figures who come from these regions, who are predominently Republican. What you see and hear is a spectrum of nonsense that ranges into the lunatic fringe. One thing that strikes me as quite odd is the breakdown of common sense and cause and effect reasoning. For example, does it make sense in bad economic times, that the government should give more money to the super rich and cut its own budget by laying off as many public service employees as possible? This giveaway is the road to recovery, creates more jobs, and so it's called a jobs program. Does it make sense for the Greek government to hand over power to an unelected EU banker and expect its economy and society to improve their conditions? In the US, I think I can connect the breakdown of common sense and cause and effect reasoning to the terrible public education system, especially in the same regions on the drought map. I think chances are high an overlay of both topos would show a high correspondence. Now I need to make a couple of arguement for these apparent connections. A good education should spend a lot of time on improving a quasi-innate common sense, cause and effect reasoning, and some general awareness of the state of society---and your position within its structures. There are a lot of different ways to accomplish these goals. One way is to spend a lot of time out of the classroom, going about the urban or rural environments and watch how things work. This kind learning comes from sources like geography where you can learn about the earth, and its societies. Another source is biology where you learn about how plants and animals and those mysterious creepy crawlers go about their business of staying alive. (Personal interlude...) I vaguely remember some of these childhood insights, which were something like flash moments, some of it quite cruel and destructive like dropping half dead flies into a spider's web, or pinching snails on their long eye antenna. Some of it was scary like watching bees, wasps, spiders and ants up close... or in the park where it was a bad idea to feed squirrels. Don't put your finger in a rabbit cage. One of the most stunning moments in my childhood memory was when me and Jesus on Calle de Rayon were sitting in the shade watching the chickens and his mother Elba came out of the kitchen. We thought she was going to do feeding instead of us. She pulled out her kitchen towel and quickly grabbed the big white by the head and gave it a hard swing around and around, and let go. It ran around the outside tile patio bumping into things and finally fell over with its twisted neck dragging on the ground. My eyes widened with incredulity... Fuck! Madre de Dios! This primordial event carried on in the kitchen where Elba cut off the head that nobody wanted to look at, and hung the chicken to drain the blood into the concrete sink. She then put the feathered body into a large pot of boiling water on a charcole braiser with a blackened grill. Feathers and all, I wondered? She took it out and cooled it off under ice cold running water and pucked it. She scraped the pin feathers off with an ancient knife pulling out the quills with her thumb against the knife edge... I had never seen women's hands work with such precision. I believed in Elba, with a philosophical statement of my nine year old mind. It answered the great question, what is a Woman? Elba was a picture of health as where her five children... as they have remained in my mind through all these decades... I later found out they moved to Durango where Jorge's job as foreman in the sugar factory opened a new plant. [Close personal remembrance.] Drought areas also correspond to areas of rural poverty, extreme stress, and terrible school systems. I think this is probably true around the world, with most of Africa as a global example. The basic premise is that public schools reflect the conditions around them. Put in some arguement about poverty as the closest corelative to poor academic achievement here. And there you have it. CG
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