United States | News & Politics

teaching the theory of evolution

Here's an article that goes through how evolution is taught in schools across the US. In essence, no state bans evolution, and most states explicitly require teaching it.

For Florida specifically (quote is from the above article, and here's an article about the mentioned standards):

On February 19, 2008, the Florida State Board of Education adopted new science standards that explicitly require the teaching of evolution in public schools. This is the first time this was required.

I don't know if the recent (this year?) curriculum changes touch on evolution, but the federal court system has consistently held that states and public school districts cannot require intelligent design to be taught (see others in the "see also" section).

The most I've seen is that states can require mentioning alternatives to established theories, as in they need to demonstrate that there's rarely complete consensus in science and that new evidence can change even very established theories. To me that sounds very reasonable, provided the alternatives also have actual, scientific evidence for them.

fiscal responsibility

Oh yeah, it's never been about that, that's just the excuse they give to sugarcoat it.

What they're actually interested in is stimulating the economy, meaning increasing stock valuations and reducing unemployment. Those look good and help them get reelected. If they focused on workers, that would reduce profits (and thus stock prices) and slow economic expansion (and this increase unemployment).

Whether this is good or bad depends on your perspective. If you're a small business owner, investor, or specialized employee, it's great! If you're a blue collar worker that can easily be replaced, it's horrendous.

The fiscal responsibility bit is just an excuse to get people on board.

Democrats come at it from a different angle. They bill themselves as being socially responsible and protecting workers, but what this actually means is reducing corporate profits and consolidating workers into unions, because unions generally means votes. This means smaller businesses tend to suffer because the barrier to start a business gets higher (need to provide more benefits to workers), and they tend to cater to the interests of larger companies that want to entrench themselves. They do this by regulating industries, which again raises the barrier to entry for a new business. They also want the unemployed vote, hence all of the social programs for the poor. Unions don't need universal healthcare, UBI, etc, so they're not that motivated to reduce unemployment if they can cater to those displaced.

At least that's my perspective, but maybe I'm just jaded from years of disappointment from both sides of the aisle.