Also interesting is that this could sometimes be a counter-productive process:

people in the grip of the uncanny tend to see patterns where none exist — becoming more prone to conspiracy theories, for example. The urge for order satisfies itself, it seems, regardless of the quality of the evidence.

I knew there was a higher purpose to all those hours I spent watching Monty Python.

On the whole, the higher end of the scale matches with my personal tastes (Dylan, Ben Folds, Pink Floyd, Radiohead), so I think we can safely conclude that this is 100% accurate and totally scientifically valid.  One thing I did find surprising was that jazz falls somewhere in the lower-middle region of the scale, given that most jazz people seem to me to be highly skilled musicians and often very knowledgable about not only music but many other aspects of culture.  On reflection, though, it occurs to me that my jazz playing/listening friends and acquaintances tend to struggle in structured environments (e.g. the final year of high school) and also tend to vigorously pursue, er, alternative studies, such as the study of drug and alcohol abuse through first hand experience, to perfect their art.

“Books that Make You Dumb” is also interesting, although it lacks the pretty coloured graphs of the musical variant.  Dan Brown and The Holy Bible both appear at the end of the spectrum you would expect, although I was very surprised to see “The Alchemist” in the top 10, a novel I found trite, preachy and simplistic in every respect.

For example, the principal of one religious school tells The Age that at least he doesn’t “hide” evolution from students:

“We don’t hide the fact that there is a theory of evolution, and that’s how we’d present it, as a theory,” Mr Bray said.

“We teach it, explain what it is, and at the same time we present clearly and fairly, and we believe convincingly, the fact that our position as a school is that God created the heaven and earth … There wouldn’t be any point of being a faith-based school if we didn’t think that God was the creator.”

Mr Bray’s faith-based school has no problem accepting money from secular-based taxation of unbelievers, of course.  According to The Age, up to 200,000 Australian children are now being taught in evangelical Christian schools.

These issues are particularly relevant as the new Federal Government considers a reallocation of funding for such schools, which gradually increased throughout the Howard era.  A more in depth piece can be read here, which highlights the fact that independent schools in Victoria are exempt from discrimination laws relating to employment and are thus free to hire only the devout.

In particular, two relationships stand out:

• atheism is proportional to growth in property value and inversely proportional to levels of mortgage debt; and
• low levels of education are (strongly) proportional to levels of Christianity.

Behold the graph of “year 10 education or lower” versus “Christian”:

Of course correlation != causation, but the relationships are interesting to ponder.

Perhaps the most startling point is that calculation has been removed from the physics syllabus. Everything must be described in words. As such, the very core of the subject – describing nature in a precise and mathematical fashion – is gone, replaced by wonders such as this sample question and answer:

Q: Why would radio stations broadcast digital signals rather than analogue signals?

A: Can be processed by computer / ipod

This question is given in the ‘stupid’ category (others identified are ‘vague’ and ‘political’). The over-arching issue is probably more interesting though:

In this course, pupils debate topics like global warming and nuclear power. Debate drives science, but pupils do not learn meaningful information about the topics they debate. Scientific argument is based on quantifiable evidence. The person with the better evidence, not the better rhetoric or talking points, wins. But my pupils now discuss the benefits and drawbacks of nuclear power plants, without any real understanding of how they work or what radiation is.

This sounds alarmingly like the type of “scientific” debate we are constantly subjected to in public and political forums: vague ideological arguments dressed up with some of the trappings of science but none of the actual data and precision. These students will no doubt have strong views about nuclear power, but they’ll never help design a working fusion reactor – unfortunately that might involve taking a few measurements and doing a few calculations.

These kids are told at home or by Muslim preachers that the Holocaust never happened. Teachers aren’t challenging that misinformation, they’re shutting up so as not to disturb a world view based on lies.

Startling, to say the least. However, as this blog suggests, the instant anti-Muslim spin put on the story by the piece in the Australian is quite misleading. As well as dramatically overstating the situation, it turns out that in fact it is a case of schools wishing to avoid conflict with religious students generally who reported they were altering their teaching, including altering teaching to avoid upsetting (drum roll please) yes, Christian kiddies too:

A third school found itself ‘strongly challenged by some Christian parents for their treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict-and the history of the state of Israel that did not accord with the teachings of their denomination’.

And what did the study actually say? Well, it was actually about strategies for teaching students about history in the face of misconceptions about historical events:

Addressing emotive and controversial history effectively requires an understanding of student misconceptions. Without this awareness of misconceptions about events such as the Holocaust, appropriate learning strategies are rendered impossible. Students often bring misconceptions and stereotypes with them.

In other words, unless you are aware of the bias students may bring with them into the classroom, you can’t teach them history properly. So really, this study is about helping to overcome the problem of students believing falsehoods or inaccurate versions of key events, and goes so far as to say that:

Teachers also need to be encouraged, rather than penalised, for encouraging debate and risk-taking in the classroom and schools given support when facing challenges from parents and communities.

So, to review: teachers are struggling when teaching history to students from religious (and it does seem to be only religious) backgrounds who are pre-conditioned to believe lies or half truths about significant historical events. This includes both Muslim and Christian students. There is an identified need for institutionalised support for teachers and schools to enable them to teach history accurately and properly in the face of pressure from religious communities or parents.

However, none of this suits The Australian‘s preferred “history wars” world view (or that of other conservative media outlets around the world), which is that fundamentalist Muslims and left-wing teachers are secretly colluding to create some sort of post-modern version of history where the holocaust is denied and radical Muslims appeased.

Given the almost total lack of accuracy in the reporting, however, perhaps they should spend some time working on reporting the present accurately before they worry about the past.

UPDATE: The US seems to have its own approach to teaching kids about the Holocaust – divide them into ‘Germans’ and ‘Jews’ and let them oppress each other: link (thanks to KO).

According to the ABC:

The church’s deed on the land stipulates there should be no foetal stem cell research or procedures involving the termination of human life or artificial creation of it.

There isn’t enough detail to be clear what, in a legal sense, the university’s rights actually are in respect of the land. It does appear, however, that the decision to ban certain types of research in the new facility was voluntary, and not an actual legal obligation resulting from the terms of the sale.

It’s tempting to reason, along somewhat libertarian lines, that the university is an independent entity, and that it is entitled to limit research in whatever way it considers to be in its own interest. Fans of the free market would no doubt add that students and academics who object to the arrangement can always exercise their freedom of choice to go elsewhere.

However, such reasoning ignores the fact that the university is a public institution: it receives public funding, and members of the public attend via government-funded places. Furthermore, it is an institution which has been built over many years by the Australian community, and which forms part of a tertiary system which is an extremely valuable community resource. From a scientific perspective, it also (presumably) purports to produce objective, reasoned output which is in line with contemporary international standards.

This seems to be an increasingly problematic area in Australian education: the state funding organisations which take a religious, rather than strictly rational and academic, approach to certain subject matter. Of course with the Federal Government recently actually paying $90 million to put chaplains directly into state schools, it’s evidently not an issue of great concern to our politicians.

If state institutions are to be limited in what they research, surely there is an appropriate mechanism already in place to determine what is and is not acceptable: the Australian law, as passed by the elected representatives of the Australian people. That would be the very same Australian people who fund those institutions with their taxes.

There is also a serious question as to where one draws the line with such an arrangement. What about a new physics department built on land acquired from a religious organisation that believes in a strict interpretation of the book of genesis as the explanation for the origins of the universe? Or what if the new facility had been built on land bought from a group who were anti-evolution creationists? How about an arts department limited in the scope of its study by the social and sexual mores of, say, a fundamentalist Islamic group?

The university has done a Faustian deal [NB: the study of Faust may offend the orthodox version of the Devil] and has thereby done a great disservice to not only academic and intellectual tradition, but to the public which both funds the University and relies on its output. Perhaps the university Senate should read up on the Catholic Church’s historical record on supporting objective science before making such decisions – that is, if the study of history is still permitted on those parts of the campus which aren’t regarded as holy ground.