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Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Kristof: "The best argument against "intelligent design" has always been humanity itself."
Posted by Jill | 6:53 AM

Is there a more infuriating columnist than Nicholas Kristof? He'll write something so sycophantic to the current Administration you want to put his photo up on a dartboard, and then he'll do a series on Darfur that takes your breath away. Then he'll do a column like this, which points out a fact that needs to be addressed, but does it in a completely dumbass way.

Today he takes on the ridiculous debate over intelligent design, and says what ought to be obvious to everyone: that this debate is about American illiteracy in science and math -- and essentially blames East Coast intellectuals (read: liberals):

One-fifth of Americans still believe that the Sun goes around the Earth, instead of the other way around. And only about half know that humans did not live at the same time as dinosaurs.

The problem isn't just inadequate science (and math) teaching in the schools, however. A larger problem is the arrogance of the liberal arts, the cultural snootiness of, of ... well, of people like me - and probably you.

What do I mean by that? In the U.S. and most of the Western world, it's considered barbaric in educated circles to be unfamiliar with Plato or Monet or Dickens, but quite natural to be oblivious of quarks and chi-squares. A century ago, Einstein published his first paper on relativity - making 1905 as important a milestone for world history as 1066 or 1789 - but relativity has yet to filter into the consciousness of otherwise educated people.

"The great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the Western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had," C. P. Snow wrote in his classic essay, "The Two Cultures."

The counterargument is that we can always hire technicians in Bangalore, while it's Shakespeare and Goethe who teach us the values we need to harness science for humanity. There's something to that. If President Bush were about to attack Iraq all over again, he would be better off reading Sophocles - to appreciate the dangers of hubris - than studying the science of explosives.


Kristof is wrong, of course....illiteracy in math and science is not some kind of East Coast liberal conspiracy, it's because, to paraphrase Barbie, math and science are hard.

Some of us breeze through chemistry and biology as if it's kindergarten. Others find it a trial and tribulation imposed on us for some unknown and nefarious purpose. Your Humble Blogger is in the latter category. I excelled in English, History, and languages, and rarely was able to pull higher than a C in math or science (the one notable exception being plane geometry, to which I took like a fish to water). My one lifetime D was in algebra, and I'm not convinced that the serious cut I sustained on a piece of broken glass pipe in high school chemistry wasn't at its core a cry for help.

Still -- despite my quantitative limitations, I learned enough science to know that the earth revolves around the sun. And I suspect that a good chunk of that half who believes humans and dinosaurs walked side-by-side are evangelical Christians.

But for those of us who are quantitatively-challenged, tackling the arcana of the concrete universe requires an intestinal fortitude that many of us just don't have -- until we will ourselves to have it. I was 33 before I decided that no matter how hard it was, I was going to learn programming languages, and attempted to start a master's degree --and dropped out after three courses. I was 38 before I decided to give it another try. Sure, it was in Management Information Systems instead of straight computer science, but then again, I was trying to make myself marketable, not join the ranks of academia.

I've never done anything so difficult in my life. It took me five years, but I did it. And if you don't count the C in Pascal in my first aborted attempt, I finished with a 3.8 GPA. Not too shabby for someone who always found math and science too arcane to contemplate.

To this day, most science programs make my eyes glaze over. Mr. Brilliant can sit for hours watching programs on geology and astrophysics. I'd rather listen to a political discussion or a program on do-it-yourself home improvements. But when I have to figure out a complicated coding problem at work, I do it. It just requires ratcheting up the focus and effort.

And THAT, Mr. Kristof, is the problem. Americans are just not used to being challenged. We want assurances from Big Daddy president that we'll be safe. We deck our kids out in full body armor just to go out and play. We refuse to sacrifice anything at a time of war. If something is difficult, we avoid it at all costs. And we place no emphasis on intelligence and learning. We are enduring eight years of the most incurious, ignorant president in history. We revere movie stars, rock stars, and professional athletes. The math and science geeks are still just that -- geeks. In our culture, the ignorant who can run fast are revered while the guys in the labs seeking cures for cancer are ignored. And it's not east coast elitists who set those social mores.
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