Maybe They Could Just Teach Genesis Instead...

Okay, I'm a sucker for the Weird News, it's the the first thing I read, even before Zippy. Today's, though, did not amuse.

Government in Action!

In January, the Berkeley (Calif.) School Board began consideration of a near-unanimous recommendation of Berkeley High School's Governance Council to eliminate science labs from its curriculum, reasoning that the classes mostly serve white students, leaving less money for programs for underperforming minorities. Berkeley High's white students do far better academically than the state average; black and Latino students do worse than average. Five science teachers would be dismissed. [East Bay Express, 12-23-09]

Conservatives have their hangups about gay marriage and insistence on an imbecilic and destructive 'war on drugs,' and liberals come back with this kind of bullshit.

If this school board is so focused on outcomes, why isn't the outcome they focus on getting their black and Latino students to succeed in science? That'd be a positive outcome, and to say that it's unrealistic or impossible is, in my view, a racist attitude. There's nothing about being black or Latino that makes a student incapable of dissecting a frog or learning to balance the equations that solve chemical reactions.

If they're behind their white classmates in the prerequisites, changes need to be made for sure. But these changes should be to remedy the problem that gets them to high school unprepared for high school classes.

Wonder what the Berkeley School Board would think of substituting pure Creationism for that biology class. It's a simple story, an illiterate toddler eating a steady diet of lead paint chips can grasp it, so surely even Berkeley's underprivileged could probably hold their own in that class. Or we could go Greek and tell the kids there are four elements: Earth, Wind, Fire and Water.

I suppose these assheads could cut down on the number of DUI arrests by raising the legal limit to .30 BAC.

Me, I want to cuff the Berkeley School Board (and the morons on this so-called Governance Council) to uncomfortable chairs and make them watch Stand and Deliver until they see the light.