Yep. The Soapbox is back

Well, tonight, in honor of my parents (and the rest of the Davidson College Concert Choir), I'm playing some classical music rather than the customary (i.e., you know, those nights when I got the writer's block super terrible and decided to write about sandwiches and whatever else I decided to talk about) Powerglove. For those of you who don't know of Powerglove, they're a rather ridiculous band that does metal remixes of 90s video game music and I just closed the Youtube tab with the music. Strong work, Rob. But yes. Powerglove does remixes of video game music and 90s cartoon theme songs. They are quite epic. They also do a mean "Heffalumps and Woozles."

It's so bad.

But that's not what I'm going to talk about tonight. I mean, the very idea of that first paragraph (or even this one) being relevant to the topic at hand is laughable. No, I was originally going to talk about a little bit of fan mail that I got last night. It reads as follows:

"It is apparent that you don't read the comments to your blog. If you don't read the comments, how are you going to get more soup??? Do let me know if you ever actually read this.

"Oh, nice blog."

I went on a bit of a wild goose chase about this, as two and a half (because I don't know how thoroughly Sujin actually reads this) readers are aware. See, the comment is anonymous. There is little indicating who the author might be in the comment itself. My first thought was the dear Ajax, but he tends to go on a bit more and have a bit more snarking and references in his comments. My next thought was Sujin, because she was on Facebook when I discovered this comment, and she was worth asking. Of course, both of these folks have commented before and have usernames that give them away. I was pretty worried that it might be spam. I was going to do a careful and probably quite snarky analysis of this comment. You know, to draw the culprit out.

Well, I probably shouldn't do that, because it was my Dad. Hi, Dad! Yes, I do read the comments. I'm sure that I'll get more soup at some point, but as you are aware, soup itself isn't so much my thing (with notable exceptions, such as your chili recipe, which I will find one day! You'll rue the day you cheated me of my birthright! Oh, wait, that was Jacob.).

Team Cheating Jerk Who Went On To Found A Nation, Sorta

 But no. We're not talking about that anymore. But hey, it was a good run while it lasted.

No, we're having a flashback to France. But we're not talking about Bev this time. No, we're going to school. And, oh boy. We're going to talk about teachers. Namely, the just plain screwed up stuff that they believed (and I assume still believe).

See, they all seemed pretty groovy. I mean, I'm hardly super social, because I just worked with Annette (who is a straight up awesome lady. She and I joked around about drinking, she helped me calm down when I was freaking out about my visa, she hooked me up with some GREAT Chablis, and she was just generally a joy to work with and know. I'm sure I could have made that a non-parenthetical sentence, but there was no time for that.).

The Chablis is pictured here, along with our Mystery Commenter. No soup, though.

So one day, we're in class, probably talking about America or some such, and we hear some kids arguing. Upon further investigation, we discover that they're arguing over whether or not the moon landing occurred. Mind you, these kids are around 8 years old, tops. These are also the kids who, on my first day of observation, said, "I don't go to McDonald's, because it supports the war in Israel." We figure that they've heard this from their parents. Whatever. We can't change what their parents say to them- it's their business.

Author's portrayal of their home life.

As we find out, no. It was not the parents. It was, rather, one of the staff members who basically amounts to a gym teacher named Farouk. When we ask him about this, he says that he just meant that they should know all the theories and have all the facts before making decisions themselves. Well, thank God, Farouk. I remember how when I was 8, I was entirely capable of finding and interpreting all the facts in such a manner that would allow me to make an informed decision. Hell, I still can't do that. I'm half expecting my Cousin Mary to win a school board position in Charleston, because I couldn't think of anyone else for the write-in only positions. (Not entirely true- I also put my advisor and my MSTP director's names in there. I have no doubt that my one vote tipped the balance for them.)

Annette and I go back into our classroom, and then she does something for which I will always adore her. She goes on a very calm and composed rant. It basically consisted of, "How dare he. These kids are here in a not great neighborhood, and they need something to believe in. He had no right to take something that powerful and say, 'Haha, no, it really didn't happen. Look at the crosshairs in that one picture. Look at the flag. Those things don't match up with what NASA is telling us about the moon. They were never there.' That's taking one of the greatest things we have ever done and deciding that it couldn't possibly have happened because..."

His day has come.

I mean, it comes back to my whole rant about scientists needing to be proactive. We're certainly not going to get all the conspiracy theorists to suddenly say, "My word! I have been adhering to a dogma based around spurious evidence, and it really doesn't make a difference! I have seen the error in my ways, and I will honor science in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the biology, the chemistry, and the physics. The Spirits of all three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!"

And as Thierry Meyssan said, "IT'S ALL A BIG LIE."

And of course, there's nothing that we can really do about parents teaching their children what they're going to teach them. But good Lord, schools are NOT supposed to be where kids are hearing that sort of thing. I remember my 8th Grade Science teacher being one of these types (more with, "THERE'S A SUPERVOLCANO UNDER YELLOWSTONE THAT'S GOING TO EXPLODE. ALUMINUM IN DEODORANT CAUSES ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE." (and no, there's no apostrophe, because Alzheimer) "ALSO PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES ARE SUPPRESSING THE CURE FOR CANCER AND AIDS, WHICH IS LIKE THIS LITTLE SOAP BUBBLE THING THAT WILL DISRUPT MEMBRANES." So, yeah. This beef isn't just with Farouk and the instances I saw at Joliot-Curie.

As is often the case, XKCD says it better.

That's right. The school was called Joliot-Curie. (You know, for Irène Joliot-Curie. The French lady that won that Swedish honor in some science. Oh, gosh. If only I could remember the name of that award. Hmm... The Duke Grant? No, that's something else. The Patrician Award? Ah well, it'll come to me eventually.) What do you think she'd make of all this? Shall we slap them in her face a bit more with our ideas about how science ACTUALLY happened (i.e., with magical fairies, or dragons, or, well, you know what I'm going to say next (it's aliens))?

Geez, and we wonder why kids don't do well in science. If they can't believe in it, why should they care? I mean, a conspiracy theory (or a conspiracy, period) spices up history and literature and the rest of the humanities, but in science? The kids stop trusting it, so they stop getting excited about it, and they stop seeing the point in actually understanding it, because we clearly can't do much with it. (I won't speak about math conspiracies, because I'm not sure how that would even work. "Kids, gather round as I tell you about the tyranny of the decimal system and how it's been lying to you for years. Did you know 6 x 9 can be 54? It can! You just have to belieeeeeeve it." (..and do a base change to base 13 numbers, and who knows how to count in that?)) I mean, tracking back to Farouk and the moon landing, who hasn't been a kid and wanted to be an astronaut? I mean, I grew out of that when I found out that space will make you lose your bones and can cause problems with your heart, but still- I wanted to be an astronaut at one point. Space is the one area where the kids can see what you're talking about (unlike cells and atoms and the like), where they can actually do/make things involving it without a bunch of safety precautions (unlike electricity and the like), and where it's exciting and unexplored (unlike rocks and plants). It's what starts a lot of kids off in liking science, and then they get excited about blowing things up in chemistry and getting to dissect a frog in bio. Take that wonder away, disillusion them early, and you get students who won't get excited about the harder (but really interesting) subjects later on.

That said, I have no idea how to fix it. Teachers need the freedom to teach effectively, and kids need to be able to deal with conspiracy theories when they hear them. But for the love of God, keep them away from our science and outside the classroom. We already have plenty of adults who buy into some of this crap. Hell, they keep getting publicity and get to talk to the UN (because that is a wonderful use of the international community's time and in no way sullies what the UN represents). The last thing we need is to start teaching it to children.

Have some glow kitties.