St Andrews, Scotland, UK: Aside from its famous golf course, St Andrews, Scotland is famous for its venerable university, founded in 1413, making the University of St. Andrews the third oldest university in the English-speaking world. It is one of the great universities in the world, especially renowned for its programs in the humanities and the social sciences. During the past few days here in St Andrews, I had the great privilege of presenting a lecture and attending an anthropological conference on how we imagine things -- The Imagination: A Universal process of knowledge? -- certainly a subject that showcases scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.
During the conference I was shocked to learn that David Cameron's government, citing the importance of fiscal austerity, has cut all funding for the humanities and social sciences. Given general reductions in government funding for higher education, university tuition is going to increase exponentially, making it increasingly difficult for middle and working class students to attend a university. Officials cut social social and humanities because they seem to think that subjects like philosophy, history, literature, foreign languages, sociology, anthropology and film studies have no utility. Scholarship in these disciplines, they would argue, has little, if any implication for public policy and brings no economic return. Following this line of narrow-minded reasoning, it makes little sense to invest precious pounds in such "unimportant" pursuits. These short-sighted policies are likely to have a devastating impact on UK universities and, by extension, the young people they would like to educate into well-informed citizens.
The events in the UK, of course, got me thinking about the future of the humanities and social sciences in the U.S. Although Prime Minister Cameron has a decidedly conservative philosophy, I don't think he has denied the human responsibility for climate change or questioned the theory of evolution. On the other side of the pond, by contrast, these know-nothing ideas have flowed into the mainstream of the Republican Party. One of the frontrunners for the Republican Presidential nomination, Governor Rick Perry of Texas, has questioned the theory of evolution, which is based upon more than 150 years of scientific testing, debate, and reflection. He also denies the overwhelming scientific evidence that the earth's climate is warming and that such warming is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Instead he makes dismissive remarks about scientists, suggesting indirectly they they fudge results of their investigations. Indeed, Governor Perry has joked about his lackluster record as a student at Texas AM and has demonstrated a profound ignorance of history and the lessons it provides for American presidents. Instead of claiming the need to learn about the social, economic, cultural and, indeed, the political complexities of the world, Governor Perry appears to make important judgments based on his personal experience.
Should an anti-science candidate like Rick Perry get elected to the U.S. presidency, what might we expect in the world of higher education? He would most certainly appoint like-minded cronies to important posts to implement his anti-science policies. Citing the lack of its economic return, he would probably recommend that the federal funding of pure scientific research be cut substantially. Like David Cameron, he would probably be thrilled to cut research in the social science and humanities, an exceedingly small slice of the current federal budget, to unsustainable levels. He would probably want to make deeper cuts to federal programs that help students pay increasingly high college tuitions.These kinds of political moves, which are based upon an ignorant populism that falsely cast scientists and humanists as members of an effete elite, would obliterate higher education in America. In Governor Perry's Anti-Science America the drastic restriction of education funding would "dumb-down" the curriculum, make it exceedingly difficult for scholars to engage in research to contribute to knowledge and refine teaching, and would make it impossible for millions of deserving students to educate themselves in what is now an highly competitive world in which getting a job requires the skills you acquire in a college or a university.
But life is more than simply going to work, if you're lucky enough to have a job, and returning home. If you deny the value of science, the arts, and the humanities, if you cast aspersions on college and university teaching, what does that mean for the quality of social life in America? It means that in Rick Perry's Anti-Science America, in which the gap between rich and poor would increase even more, poverty would not only be expressed economically, but socially and culturally as well.
The climate for learning that universities provide is a pathway to a bright future. Such an atmosphere can give students the skills -- technical, analytical, social, and cultural -- to move forward in the world. In Rick Perry's Anti-Science America, in which this climate is likely to disappear, the future looks bleak as more and more of young people would become ill-equipped to confront the complex realities of the coming years.
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The Republican party, taht onde has been know by the excellency of its politicians and the great man that have inspired the U.S. and turned it into the great country it is, has given us all, in the past decades, some notorious examples of what political blind doctrination and populist aspiration can mean.
A candidate that thinks education is a matter for the backyard of the country, to be treated as a simple political decision is a extremelly bad choice for the White House.
Education is about giving the citizens all the tools they need to choose what kind of life they wanna have. Education must be just as plural and freedom maker as it can be possible. It's not a choice between what's more convenient: it's a path to all paths, WHICH will be chosen by the person himself. State should not chose what the citizens must believe: it's up to them to make their own coices.
But as we can see, Tea Partiers and most of the people who call themselves "Republicans" seem to ignore at least half the values I tried to bring out from the US Constitution. God and the Republic sometimes are more alike than the English Christian Monarchy. Sometimes I wonder if the United States is trully a country who stands for freedom of religion.
Freedom of speech and liberty of religion are two main principles every American is proud to say he or she stands for.
But recently, debates about public education and the teaching of the Bible or the teaching of the Theory of Evolution have deeply impressed me.
First of all, is the role of the State to choose what students may learn or to provide a scientific formation for students? Because public education cannot be a different concept is the State of Utah and another in the State of NY. And if by any means providing education signifies privileging some religious vison of the world instead of granting frredom of religion, this concept of Education is remarkably wrong. While by the darwinist theories on may continue to attend to his church and believing in what is written in the Bible (for instance) about the origin of life, teaching every student that God did the world in 7 seven days hurts every student right to not be compelled by the state within following a religion. Most of all, at this point the State abdicates from its role to provide education and begins to influence students into one or another doctrine, using its public attributions to propagate some religous doctrine instead.
•  We rank 36th in the nation in high school graduation rates. An estimated 3.8 million Texans do not have a high school diploma.
•  We rank 49th in verbal SAT scores, 47th in literacy and 46th in average math SAT scores.
•  We rank 33rd in the nation on teacher salaries.
http://www.chron.com/opinion/outlook/article/We-can-t-afford-to-cut-education-1691329.php
Despite this, Gov. Perry and the state legislature cut the education budget by $5 billion or 6% rather than raise taxes. Look for more of the same if Perry becomes president.
We already spend the most on Education as a Country yet our scores are dismal . . . how is money the solution here? Perry and others are correct in realizing that money is not the cure-all in the Education system.
This is not only a complex societal problem (where the youth -and most likely parents- don't value education or apply the self discipline), but also a Political problem because a certain Political party decided that money fixes everything and just throws more at it as if that's the holy grail.
Obviously money isn't the answer or else the problem would have been solved by now.