Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD
strong peer pressure not to succeed in school. If they did well in
their studies, they might be accused of 'acting white'.
• Schools could easily give much more recognition and rewards
to kids who are outstanding in science and math. Why don't
they? Why not special jackets with school letters? Announcements
in assembly and the school newspaper and the local
press? Local industry and social organizations to give special
awards? This costs very little and could overcome peer pressure
not to excel.
• Headstart is the single most effective . . . program for improving
children's understanding of science and everything else.
There were also many passionate, highly controversial opinions
expressed which, at the very least, give a sense of how deeply
people feel about the subject. Here's a smattering:
• All the smart kids are looking for the fast buck these days, so
they become lawyers, not scientists.
• I don't want you to improve education. Then there'd be nobody
to drive the cabs.
• The problem in science education is that God isn't sufficiently
honored.
• The fundamentalist teaching that science is 'humanism' and is
to be mistrusted is the reason nobody understands science.
Religions are afraid of the sceptical thinking at the heart of
science. Students are brainwashed not to accept scientific
thinking long before they get to college.
• Science has discredited itself. It works for politicians. It makes
weapons, it lies about marijuana 'hazards', it ignores about the
dangers of agent orange, etc.
• The public schools don't work. Abandon them. Let's have
private schools only.
• We have let the advocates of permissiveness, fuzzy thinking
and rampant socialism destroy what was once a great educational
system.
• The school system has enough money. The problem is that the
white males, usually coaches, who run the schools would never
(and I mean never) hire an intellectual . . . They care more
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