Who's Dumber Than A Third-Grader? The SC Legislature!

[onager]

I'm currently in South Carolina for the holidays. This story, from April 2014, popped up in today's newspaper in a "Best Stories of the Year" round-up.

I hadn't seen anything about it earlier, and thought you grumps in A/A would appreciate it. Other grumps are also free to enjoy it as well, of course.

To summarize:

--Olivia McConnell, an 8-year-old history buff, came across an interesting bit of state history. In 1725, slaves digging in a SC swamp found teeth belonging to the Columbian Mammoth - a species that went extinct over 12,000 years ago. These were some of the first specimens of vertebrate fossils to be discovered in North America.

--Olivia wrote the State Legislature, asking them to designate the Columbian Mammoth as the Official State Fossil of South Carolina.

--So far, it's the kind of thing State legislators do all the time. Simple, right? Wrong - this is South Carolina, where a good chunk of the State Leg. are right-wing Repubs and diehard creationists.

--As it finally limped out of the Legislature, the bill would have read:

"The Columbian Mammoth, which was created on the Sixth Day with the other beasts of the field, is designated as the official State Fossil of South Carolina and must be officially referred to as the 'Columbian Mammoth,' which was created on the Sixth Day with the other beasts of the field."

According to LiveScience, that language was finally removed and Gov. Nikki Haley signed the bill on May 16.

Links to story:

http://www.livescience.com/45778-south-carolina-gets-state-fossil.html

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/04/02/state-fossil-science-fight/7183277/

[Curmudgeoness]

1. I am surprised

that they even acknowledged that these teeth belonged to a mammoth that went extinct before the earth was even created.

Good on the governor for not signing it with that incredibly ignorant language.

[Rob H.]

2. Wow, that's a tortured paragraph

"The Columbian Mammoth, which was created on the Sixth Day with the other beasts of the field, is designated as the official State Fossil of South Carolina and must be officially referred to as the 'Columbian Mammoth,' which was created on the Sixth Day with the other beasts of the field."

Redundant sentence is redundantly redundant.

They have at least one spectacularly ignorant legislator influencing the teaching of science in SC, too:

In February, a legislative committee approved new science standards that include the teaching of evolution but omit the issue of natural selection.

Nearly 90 years after the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee, some South Carolina legislators maintain that evolution shouldn't be taught as scientific fact in public schools.

State Sen. Mike Fair, a Greenville Republican who serves on the panel that will decide the science standards, said that natural selection should be taught as theory rather than as scientific fact. He argues that natural selection can make biological changes within species but it can't explain the whole progression from microbes to humans.

"This whole subject should be taught as a pro and con," he said.

Science is not a democracy. It's true whether you believe it or not.

Edit: emphases added by me.

[onager]

3. Greenville is the home of Bob Jones University.

But I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

And that clown is on the committee to decide the science standards. Spiffy.

When I attended a South Carolina high school - shortly after that Columbian Mammoth walked the earth - our science teacher just flat refused to teach us anything about evolution. Told us it conflicted with her religious beliefs and she would not do it. AFAIK, the school board backed her up on that.

[Rob H.]

7. My high school had a fundy biology teacher

who went so far as to go through every textbook before she handed them out to students so she could staple the chapter on evolution shut. I felt really lucky that I got the other biology teacher because she wouldn't have dreamed of doing such a thing. That was 30 years ago at a public high school, fwiw.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

4. Allergic to quotation marks.

[progressoid]

5. Oh sweet jeebus.