What’s Happening To Education in the U.S. Is No Longer Guesswork
We commonly bemoan the “dumbing down of America,” though we can only speculate as to the exact mechanisms by which this has happened. Is it underfunded schools and underpaid teachers? The decay of the nuclear family? A pop culture that ridicules nerds and promotes hedonism? A concerted effort on the part of the controlling elite to make Americans less capable of critical thinking and thus easier to control?
The real boogeyman is hard to identify, perhaps because he lurks in the shadows, careful hiding his true identity.
For better or worse, that’s no longer the case. According to this article in the American Institute of Physics, Donald Trump’s candidate to lead NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Jim Bridenstine, ardent climate denier, proposes that NASA amend its institutional objectives. This would include eliminating current objectives for the “expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space” and the conduct of studies on “the utilization of aeronautical and space activities for peaceful and scientific purposes.”
What was once de facto ignorance is now de jure. What was once nebulous and clandestine is now crystal clear and in full view for all to see.
It hasn’t been a bad year for the alt-right, has it?
America, you’re one step closer to believing that the Earth is 6000 years old, that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, that evolution is “just a theory–one that has some gaps in it,” as Department of Energy Rick Perry said.
Once that’s firmly in place, all we can say is good luck; you’ll need it.
Craig,
Why do you feel a need to exaggerate and distort by the use of misquote and truncated context?
Jim Bridenstine isn’t an “ardent climate denier”, he simply questions the concept of “scientific consensus of one definition of global climate change “.
His complaint isn’t with climate change science, but with the rigid orthodoxy promulgated by some activists and their adherents, and the long disproved 93% consensus myth.
Jim Bridenstine believes NASA’s budget is being wasted on issues peripheral to it’s primary mission, space exploration.
Bridenstine’s is an MBA from Cornell University, a former executive director of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum & Planetarium and a decorated (including the Air Medal) pilot while serving the U.S. Navy.
Bridenstine has maintained a lifelong interest in space and was a long serving member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
NASA’s huge and vastly overblown bureaucracy has good reason to fear the arrival of an outsider.
Bridenstine’s has criticized NASA for diverting resources from it’s primary mission of space explanation into highly politicized, incestuous and activist explorations of climate change and global warming research.
It’s not just Jim Bridenstine asking why privately funded corporations are able to fulfill NASA’s primary mission for a fraction of the cost of NASA.
For many years NASA’s annual budget of nearly $20 billion has come under criticism, rightly or wrongly, for it’s secrecy and funding of research already being undertaken by other agencies.
The Trump administration acknowledged the importance of NASA by sparing it from larger budget cuts. However, by appointing Jim Bridenstine the administration is sending a message to NASA that it must become more accountable for how it spends it’s budget.
In the end, the administration will be judged by how effectively it manages the economy and government agencies.
(Curiously for a President accused of being a Russian puppet, one of the few programs to receive extra funding is the development of US crew transportation systems to end the need to pay Russia for crew transport services to the ISS space station).
On explanation could be the administration is choosing administrators for these positions rather than scientists and engineers who may be more easily influenced by bureaucrats.
(Another explanation is the administration just doesn’t have anyone with all the right qualifications).