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Ben Carson on Education

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Denyse O’Leary has a piece that may interest UD readers at TheBestSchools.org:

Readers may remember Ben Carson, the gifted neurosurgeon who failed Political Correctness 101 at Emory University and then gently but pointedly attacked PC in his commencement address.

Carson’s sin was to point out that Darwin’s theory of evolution offers no firm basis for making moral judgments apart from the claim that morality helps us spread our selfish genes.

Top Darwinian philosopher Michael Ruse agrees with him about that. But Ruse supports Darwinism, so he experiences no backlash. And Carson, who has saved countless lives, literally found himself in the “never again” category as a commencement speaker because he opposes it. . . .

Recently, columnist Star Parker, president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, reported on Carson’s views on education, in the light of huge expenses resulting in poor performance.”

* * *

Parker’s interview with Carson on the subject of public education in America makes for a very interesting and enlightening discussion.

Carson’s main point? Improving our public education system is not a matter of throwing more money at it. Education in this country will never improve until a change occurs in the hearts and minds of all concerned—teachers, children, and, perhaps most importantly, parents.

In order to learn successfully, children must perceive school as something worthwhile. They have to want to learn.

The rest of O’Leary’s story is here. A high point is Carson’s interview with Star Parker:

 

Comments
I here present a number of theses, each of which deserves an independent argument in support of it, but which I think are true and defensible: (1) The resistance to Darwinism largely arises from treating "Darwinism" as a scapegoat for the social ills produced by capitalism. (2) This scapegoating is due to both (a) a tendency towards imaginative free associations rather than careful attention to the material forces operating in society, esp. recently, and (b) how contemporary popularizers of Darwinism resort to capitalist metaphors in presenting their ideas, e.g. Dawkins' "selfish gene". (3) More fundamentally, contemporary Darwinists, especially in light of Monod's Chance and Necessity, conflate the theory of evolution with a materialistic metaphysics that is basically Epicurean in origin. (As Monod's title, Chance and Necesssity, attests.) Previous philosophers who accepted Darwin's theory of evolution, such as John Dewey and Hans Jonas, did not make this mistake. (And it is a mistake -- for even if Darwin himself was an Epicurean -- and there is ample evidence that he was not, insofar as Darwin himself believed in final causes -- it still would not matter, for the theory of the interdependence of variation and selection would be rationally acceptable, just as Newton's laws of physics are rationally acceptable independently of his theological metaphysics.) (4) This conflation between Darwin's theory and Epicurean metaphysics is directly tied to how Darwinism is turned into the scapegoat for capitalism, because (5) Capitalism derives its legitimacy from turning Epicurean metaphysics into its dominant ideology, just as the medieval European societal order derived its legitimacy from turning Aristotelian metaphysics into its dominant ideology. (6) The period during which Epicurean metaphysics was co-opted into the ideology of capitalism is called "the Scientific Revolution".Kantian Naturalist
November 9, 2012
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Wow, what a great video interview! I can't believe this world is still producing good people like him---and his mother!Granville Sewell
November 9, 2012
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Nothing with public education. Better then ever in history. Its all about identities that under achieve. Blacks and Mexicans and others. All about motivation. those below and above and normal comes down to motivation. This is great achiever in medicine and unique in the black world because he comes from a unique Christian origin which means strong creationist beliefs and he's confident enough to talk about it. That's why they seek him out.Robert Byers
November 8, 2012
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