As if we didn’t have enough to worry about, now it looks like “a bloc of southern school districts are successfully removing science from all textbooks”:http://www.ambiguous.org/archive.php3/2005/03/24#robin2005324.1. Sigh.

“But Chris,” you say, “They’re just calling for the removal of sex ed and evolution and the heliocentric model and other such blasphemies. Surely there’s still room for Newtonian physics and some of the less-witchy forms of alchemy.” In reply I just sigh again and continue stocking my remote mountain treehouse with food, water, and “Heinlein novels”:http://www.heinleinsociety.org/.

An update on the Buster in Vermont controversy I “ranted about”:http://www.globalspin.com/mt/archives/000480.html earlier: An “absolutely idiotic article”:http://www.gazettetimes.com/articles/2005/02/27/news/opinion/edit07.txt by Bill O’Reilly underscores the basic misconception involved. O’Reilly claims that the issue isn’t gay couples, it’s that “sex in general is an inappropriate topic for small children.”

And there you go. The first thing Bill O’Reilly thinks of when he sees two women working on a farm in Vermont is _sex_, of such a prurient nature that the mere hint of it would sear a child’s eyes for life. We might look at such a show and see a family working together to make maple syrup, but O’Reilly (and, by his deduction, the toddlers of America) see hot girl-on-girl action.

It’s all so clear now.

Gack! According to this “CNN article”:http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/01/31/students.amendment.ap/index.html, high school kids don’t understand what the First Amendment protects:

_when told of the exact text of the First Amendment, more than one in three high school students said it goes “too far” in the rights it guarantees. Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories._

The past few days it’s seemed like the Intarweb has been trying especially hard to make me angry. I was able to ignore most of the “disturbing”:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/01/26/MNGKQB0FSQ1.DTL “reports”:http://www.fordvehicles.com/autoshow/concept/synus/ up to now, but this one has me hoppin’ mad:

_The nation’s new “education secretary”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Spellings “denounced PBS on Tuesday”:http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3009795 for spending public money on a cartoon with lesbian characters, saying many parents would not want children exposed to such lifestyles._

_…The episode features two lesbian couples, although the focus is on farm life and maple sugaring._

It’s hard to describe my seething anger over this particular issue. It reminds me of how racist parents wouldn’t let their children watch Sesame Street because it showed white and “colored” children playing together happily. How dare lesbians make sugar in Vermont! Decent people shouldn’t have to watch that!

Grrrr…

I just came across the BBC’s “Learning Site”, featuring fun, educational games and even online classes. For some reason, I think this may especially be kk’s cup o’ tea (har har).
(I’m off to try the Italian course!) (Or maybe English, since I split an infinitive.)