Today I received an email from Stumble Upon with a link to this cartoon:

Would you agree that the author of the cartoon is suggesting that you only need to teach both theories in order that the kids then decide for themselves that the theory supported by science is the correct one?

And that also this teaching method is more effective than the kids simply going along with us while in class, agreeing with our position that the scientific theory is right, and the other one wrong?

Agreeing only because it’s easier that way, easier just to go along with “teach,” that which probably happens all too often, without on the part of the kids there being any real conviction that one theory is really true, the other false.

Or maybe not. Maybe the cartoon’s author agrees with me and is really suggesting that the kids will, because they’re kids, go along with the unscientific explanations, with astrology, alchemy, phrenology, and most of all with magic.

Try it yourself. What’s better than gold from iron, knowledge of our futures from the positions of the stars, the nature of who we are from the shape of our skulls, and a magic wand, rather than algebra 1 and 2 and other such “slogs” to bring everything into our understanding.

In any case, probably all four non scientific explanations of the nature of things have a much greater following, not only among kids but also among adults, than knowledge of the world obtained through science, that is, through observation, experiment and measurement.

Helas! but just as the Roman world was in large part bread and circuses, so is our world in large part astrology, magic, aliens, and unidentified flying objects.