Spending Tax Money to Beg for More Money

Why Homeschool has an excellent post pointing out a story right here in California.

Apparently a school was going to send 12 busloads of students off to Sacremento just to protest some budget cuts. For those of you outside CA, half of the state budget goes to schools. Yes, half the budget, which is bigger than the budget of most other countries.

I'm posting about this, instead of just leaving a comment, because this issues is what finally gave me the last push to decide to homeschool. I was on the fence in March, and I was planning on going to Kindergarten orientation and so forth as the local school in order to make up my mind. I joined some local mailing lists to find other parents of five year old who were setting up park dates to meet each other before school started.

And then it happened.

The highly political pleas and demands for help fighting the education budget cut started. And it make me irritated, angry, and upset. I realized that if we embarked on school, we'd be tied up in that world of PTA meetings and constant fights, and beurocracy, and all the things my poor sainted mom had to deal with just to get her kids a decent shake.

And that did it. I don't want to be associated with any of that. So I gave up on even going to the meeting, and I finally told my mom (when she asked about kindergarten registration in passing) that I wasn't sending him in the fall. And that's when I mentioned homeschooling, and she grinned and teased me about the crazy teacher's certification stuff that came up in the recent court case.

Understanding Darwin

Well, I haven't angered anyone yet, so let's get controvercial.

I'm a biologist. Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" is an excellently written book, and his theory of evolution is wonderful. However, very few people in the world actually understand it. Part of it is bad teachers. Part of it is that no one actually reads the source -- Darwin lays out his argument very well, slowly progressing from the obvious to the less obvious, taking the reader on a slow journey that maximizes understanding. But most people remember the short, sweet, and unintentionally misleading phrase "survival of the fittest".

The word 'fittest' (and fitness) as Darwin uses it does not mean what instantly jumps to most people's mind. It specifically does not mean strong, buff, fast, etc.. Well, it can, but it doesn't have to. Fittest has to do with fitting in. That's it. Which ever animal fits it's environment -- the entire environment -- and manages to make more babies will pass on more geentic material to the next generation.

Some animals use strength, Some use speed. Others are more devious -- like apes that wait until the strong apes are out hunting, or fighting each other, then quietly sneaks into their mates homes and makes a few babies for the nice strong men to raise as their own. Cuckolds, as they are called, are quite frequent in nature. It's a great strategy for the weak one -- not only do you get to make babies you don't need to invest any time or energy in raising, you get the strongest guy in the tribe to raise him for you! What a deal!

I was reading a refutation of Ben Stein's recent atrocity (and I really like Ben Stein, so it was a dismal, sad day I watched it) at The Corner:

Stein wrote:

But it fell to a true Imperialist, from a wealthy British family on both sides, married to a wealthy British woman, writing at the height of Imperialism in the UK, when a huge hunk of Africa and Asia was "owned" (literally, owned, by Great Britain) to create a scientific theory that rationalized Imperialism.

Stein's entire argument makes no sense, if you read it with any understanding of the Theory of Evolution at all.

Derbyshire does a good job refuting it even though he doesn't even bother to point out the real meaning of survival of the fittest:

If that's what "Darwinism" (he means: modern biology) is, how does it happen that there are any meek, un-hardy creatures in the world? Yet in fact "hardy" … "stronger" … "dominant" describe only a tiny proportion of species. How is it that all those wimp species are still around after three billion years? Wouldn't the "dominant" ones have eaten them all? Oh, but wait a minute … then the dominants would have eliminated their own food supply … um …