I don't think that the slavery thread is yet even within the ballpark of some of the 'intelligent design' threads from back in the day. Sure am glad that we're done with those.

I think we have severely neglected the liberal arts, especially in secondary education. If we had a strong liberal arts curriculum I think there would be better math and science students. If you think about some of the great minds of science and math, aren't they all men of liberal learning? Newton and Franklin jump to mind. Let's dump the textbook courses and get back to Great Books courses.

Of course that is just one bitter philosophy major's opinion.

I guess you mean my responses to the slavery thread. I have a philosophy degree from the University of Chicago for what it's worth, as well as a Master's from Texas A&M (though something tells me that one won't mean much to any of you), but I was absolutely incensed by some of the posts on that thread which were anything but high level intellectual discussion, including the initial one. Read C. Vann Woodward's "The Burden of Southern History" and maybe you'll get a sense of what it's like to be the only part of America ever humiliated in a war.

Now I'm tempted to go find what was our longest thread ever. philosopher is probably right it's a Brayton anti-ID piece.

Since the Civil War was in the early part of the 1860's, I don't find it terribly distressing that a lot of students might have thought it occurred before 1850. I was never good at matching up events and dates. Now if the Civil War had occurred in the 1880's and you still had lots of students placing it before 1850, that would be really distressing.

Victor's history like victor's justice is insubstantial. Expelled, the new movie concerning ID is well worth watching. One solid reason why liberal arts, especially language arts, ought to be stressed is because low scores in math and science are caused, in part, by the sheer inability to read the questions.