When Rush Limbaugh says I'm not a scientist, I'm charmed - I smirk.
Bill NyeRead
I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, that's completely inconsistent with the world we observe, that's fine. But don't make your kids do it. Because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need engineers that can build stuff and solve problems.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of teaching children scientific literacy over personal beliefs about evolution.
Bill Nye asserts that while adults may choose to reject the concept of evolution, it is crucial for the future of society that children are educated scientifically. This education will empower the next generation to become informed voters, taxpayers, and problem solvers, ultimately supporting the progress of science and technology in our communities.
In practice
A parent discussing the importance of science education at a school board meeting.
When Rush Limbaugh says I'm not a scientist, I'm charmed - I smirk.
Everybody who's a physician, who makes vaccines, who wants to find the cure for cancer. Everybody who wants to do any medical good for humankind got the passion for that before he or she was 10.
What makes the United States great, the reason people wanted to live in the United States, move here still, is because of our ability to innovate.
NASA is an engine of innovation and inspiration as well as the world's premier space exploration agency, and we are well served by politicians working to keep it that way, instead of turning it into a mere jobs program, or worse, cutting its budget.
Television isn't inherently good or bad. You go to a bookstore, there are how many thousands of books, but how many of those do you want? Five? Television's the same way. If you're going to show people stuff, television is the way to go. Words and pictures show things.
If the Earth gets hit by an asteroid, it's game over. It's control-alt-delete for civilization.
Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.
People think of poetry as a school subject... Poetry is very frustrating to students because they don't have a taste for ambiguity, for one thing. That gives them a poetry hangover.
The physical exercise and emotional stretching that children enjoy in unorganized play is more varied and less time-bound than is found in organized sports. Playtime—especially unstructured, imaginative, exploratory play—is increasingly recognized as an essential component of wholesome child development.
We do not trust educated people and rarely, alas, produce them, for we do not trust the independence of mind which alone makes a genuine education possible.
Education without social action is a one-sided value because it has no true power potential.
Education is here placed among the articles of public care, not that it would be proposed to take its ordinary branches out of the hands of private enterprise, which manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal, but a public institution can alone supply those sciences which, though rarely called for, are yet necessary to complete the circle, all the parts of which contribute to the improvement of the country, and some of them to its preservation.
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