Yesterday in Anne Arundel County, Md., District 5 County Council candidates Patrick Armstrong and Michael Peroutka debated issues that included public education, the Capital Gazette reports.
Why County Council candidates would debate school issues escapes me at the moment, but no matter. Anne Arundel County has a perfectly good school board and a superintendent, and it is these people, not the county council (just in case you were confused), who actually run the schools.
Where the candidates stand on high school
Anne Arundel County is now strongly considering pushing back the start time for high school to something a little later than 7:17 AM, which is what it is now, the earliest high school start time among Maryland’s 24 public school systems.
Mr Armstrong said he thinks starting later would be a good idea.
So far, so good.
Mr Peroutka said he didn’t think it really mattered what time high school students start their day, since the “fundamental flaw” in education is that it doesn’t include God. Specifically, we should absolutely not be teaching kids about evolution.
“Our children are taught that their great-great-granddaddy was a hunk of primordial ooze in a pond somewhere and that their granddaddy was a slimy, eely thing that finally grew legs after a million years and their daddy was a monkey,” the Gazette quoted Mr Peroutka as saying. “Then they try to teach the kids self-esteem, but they just taught the kid (they were) a massive mutations of mistakes.”
He really said evolution only takes four generations (great-great-grandaddy) and that we were “a hunk of primoridal ooze.” I’m going to write that phrase down, since it just sounds so good as I say it. Hunk of primordial ooze.
“What time they begin doing that in the morning is really not important,” he added. And I thought we only needed to educate children. Let this be a lesson to you, principals and teachers: often the adults our children go home to need an education more than the children who are sitting in the seats in front of us.
So anyway, the remarks are of little consequence, since even if Mr Peroutka is elected to the District 5 seat on the Anne Arundel County Council, he would have no more power over the curriculum in our public schools than he does now, which is very little.
And while it is surprising that county council candidates talk about evolution in a debate, it is even more surprising to me that people still live in the US and think we didn’t evolve or that species don’t diverge over time from common ancestors.
The reason talking about this is a waste of time is that there isn’t actually a difference of opinion among reasonably intelligent people about this subject. It’s like debating about whether the Earth is flat or spherical in shape. The case has been closed for a long time now.
Besides, we have more important things to debate, such as studying religion and the principles espoused by religious beliefs throughout history as part of any world history curriculum. Now that is something we could debate, since there is tremendous difference of opinion among intelligent people.
Evaluate the credibility and historical accuracy (not the morals) of the account of creation in the Book of Genesis. See Common Core English language arts speaking and listening standard SL.11-12.1.D for more information.
