The Watermelon Blog Green on the outside, social justice inside
"We can do better" (Kennedy)
Richest fluency
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body." Walt Whitman
Results of a survey in America recently showed that just 15% of Americans accept the theory of evolution. This has many implications for the quality of education generally and for people's understanding of their place in the environment and in history and their relationships with the rest of the species on this lonely little planet. Frightening implications for Australia to, now that the push is on, supported by the education minister, to teach creationism in Australian schools. The push is under the cover of repackaging creationism as 'intelligent design'.
The minister clearly doesn't understand that the premise behind 'intelligent design' is the same one that has people believing that they can see the miraculous image of the 'Virgin Mary' in misaligned fence posts, cracks on a church wall, stains in concrete in a tunnel, a toasted cheese sandwich, an ultrasound scan of a pregnant woman, and, most recently, a wardrobe door! Is he going to allow this kind of nonsense into schools too, and if not, why not?
Will the minister be happy when only 15% of Australians accept that humans evolved on this planet, or does he have a still lower figure in mind?
"You are a person of some interest,one comes to you and takes strange gain away." (Pound)
"I find that I can have no enjoyment in the world but the continual drinking of knowledge. I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good for the world." (Keats)
"nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights - or if a sparrow come before my window I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel." (Keats)