Episode #245
News Items
Who's That Noisy
- Answer to last week – Alpheid shrimp
Interview with George Hrab
- http://www.geologicrecords.net/
Question # 1 – Evangelical Listeners
- Guys, I’m an avid listener and wanted to weigh in on the homeschool topic. The USA Today article you were discussing said that 83% of homeschoolers wanted to provide religious or moral instruction. But it also said that 88% had concerns about the school environment (including safety, drugs, peer pressure). We homeschool our kids because the public system does a lousy job with education in general and safety in particular, and partly because we can’t afford a private school. I believe that’s the primary reason most do it. Yes, religious instruction is important for some, but most homeschoolers we know are more concerned about the school environment (safety), not the content of what is being taught. Also, there is plenty of opportunity to supplement traditional schooling with religious content if that’s desired, you know, ‘sunday school’, without taking the kids out of school. So I don’t really get ‘religious instruction’ as a reason. You discarded out of hand the strong evidence that homeschooled children test better than kids who have been in public schools, why? If selection bias is a concern, just filter by college freshmen first, SAT takers second, and then divide into homeschooled and non-homeschooled at that point, yes? The wiki is good, and I belive, balanced too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling It is difficult to grasp the many different state requirements for testing. Here is a good resource for state-by-state standards if you’re interested: http://www.hslda.org/laws/default.asp I realize that homeschooling isn’t for everyone. It depends on the child, the parents, finances, etc. I can tell you one thing, it would be much easier for us to just send them off to public school and not worry about it. We take it very seriously and try to do it right. I think most do, probably a few do not. Now, for something critical I’ve been wanting to write you about for a while. Sometimes I wish you guys at the podcast would realize that many of your listeners are not scientists, probably many are curious evangelical christians like myself, who enjoy the debate and the topical content of the podcast but don’t like being called names or ridiculed. I’ve learned a lot from you guys but I’ve also had to learn to filter out some of the attitude, the generalizations and judgments you dish out, to get the good stuff from the podcast. We are evangelical christians, but we’re people too. And that was not factor in the (very difficult) decision we made to homeschool. We can’t wait to take our kids to see the Spitzer Human Origins exhibit in DC this year. Please don’t assume that most homeschoolers are ignorant of the truth of evolution or other science topics. We can’t control what the book publishers put out (except with our wallets). So what do you say guys, open up the tent just a little bit? We’re listening too. Bill Ellis Greensboro, NC
Science or Fiction
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Item #1
Science
Benjamin Franklin published Poor Richard’s Almanac under the alter ego of a poor man named Richard Saunders.
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Item #2
Science
Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell is credited with the discovery of pulsars (rotating neutron stars) but her advisor, Anthony Hewish, was awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery.
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Item #3
Fiction
Galileo Galilei became blind later in life as a consequence of studying sunspots through his telescope.