All day long, this phrase has been ringing through my head, “we need more science.”  Like the Saturday Night Live skit “More Cowbell,” I kept mumbling “more science” to myself.  I’m planning out our curriculum for the upcoming school year, and I just upended a chunk of those plans in my search for more science.

It’s become painfully obvious to me that our educational system dropped the ball.  When grown adults and contributing members to society cannot seem to understand the way a virus spreads, or how complacency is a bad thing, yes, education has failed us.  Note that I didn’t say teachers – because teachers do their best to fit in everything kids need while simultaneously juggling all the other demands placed on them.  No, the system is fundamentally flawed.

 

The daily creep upwards

I’ve been in a funk for a while now.  I bounce back and forth between sheer panic and rage, watching the daily creep of numbers for both my state and my country keep going up.  I read on local groups as parents rage against schools for daring to require masks, grown adults throw tantrums about Costco refusing to let them in without a mask, and otherwise mature individuals laugh at mask-wearers and call us “sheep,” or my personal favorite, “sheeple.”

I’m somewhere between a depressive funk and screaming at the moon.  My state is currently in the Washington Post’s top 5 of their weekly trending states with highest daily reported cases/deaths, and no one seems to care.  As bad as my quarantine fatigue and levels of high anxiety are, they’re slowly being overtaken by anger.

 

Science vs. faith

I’m angry that it’s such a struggle to teach basic science.  That teachers frequently get push-back about the most simple topics because they conflict with creationism.  I’m blazing red hot MAD that it’s so tough to actually find a good science curriculum, because many publishers will label a curriculum secular when it’s not.  Unless you know better or buy the product, you won’t know this by looking at it.

I’m furious that most people, let alone publishers, don’t seem to understand the difference between “neutral” and “secular” science.  Neutral is science that has been gutted of any controversial topic.  Things like evolution.  Climate change.  Carbon dating.  All those things that can cause conflict with Creationism are removed, leaving science that resembles a pea pod – a shell devoid of actual substance.

Put it all together and swirl in a pandemic, and you have this: a country who refuses to use the most basic protections, who prioritizes the stock market over the vulnerable, and who are so eager to get back to the bars and beaches that they pretend there is no virus.

Science.  Cold, hard science, which understands that nature’s uncaring race to evolve can squash humanity like a bug.  Science, the only thing standing between us and extinction, is being rejected by the very people it tries to protect.

Education is no place for religion

Yeah, I’m mad.  Logically I understand that all of my pent-up emotions are being directed into this anger, but it’s still valid.  I can’t be angry at people (well, most people, anyway) because they don’t understand how things work.  I can only be mad at the system; the publishers who let religion creep into curriculum, and the education systems who accepted or ignored it.

More science.  It’s the only way to do better.

 

Also, other things, which I won’t go into because they’re political.  Let’s just say that history needs a massive clean-up effort too.  When the truth is being called “revisionist,” we have a serious cognitive dissonance on our hands that needs to be addressed.

 

If this post offends you or you disagree with my stance, I’m past caring.  I’m high risk, and I’ll probably die if I catch Covid-19.  We matter – all of the “pre-existing conditions” and “.1%” who have been written off as expendable.  It’s about time we speak up and push for change.  Wear the damn mask, people.