There is so much to write... where to begin.
We arrived a little late at about 1 am EST, as Jeremy posted in the comments earlier. (Please note that Jeremy and Gary will be posting in the comments or in the actual blog when we can't make it to a computer.) There was a driver from our hotel waiting to pick us up, thank goodness. We shared the car back to the hotel with a woman named Claire, from Belgium. She and Lisa chatted a good deal about Peru and travel in general. We came to learn that Claire just finished her thesis in "Osteopathie" and she was curious about Americans' attitudes toward science. Specifically, Claire was curious if it was true that in America a law was passed that prohibited the teaching of evolution. More on this later, but it is amazing the reputation we have abroad. Feel free to add your opinions on this subject in the comments area. I'd love to leave a message for Claire as she may be heading back to this hotel when she's finished with her 3 week mountain trek.
Today we were able to visit not one, but two schools. Again, I won't get into details just yet (Kate typing now, by the way. We'll save that for when I have the camera and can upload pictures.) but we learned a lot about the educational system in Peru and just how much the teachers have to fight and fund-raise for their students. It was quite a shock to see such homogenous classes. For those of you who work at HMS, take Marvin T. and Kelyn C and imagine an entire classroom of such cuties. In one classroom I was mobbed by students who were trying to pull of my glasses! Why? They couldn't believe that blue/green eyes could be natural! But it was when a student asked my age that we both felt as though we had truly visited a school for the Deaf. ;)
Alright, I'm off for now to try and navigate the spanish version of blogger to see if we can enable Jeremy and Gary to post for us when we're out of touch. Hopefully later this evening there will be pictures for you all.
And what lives in Peru? ... Alpaca!
Say hello to our furry friend :)
Queek
Guinea Pigs not only live in Peru, sometimes they're lunch!
5 comments:
Kate here, the computer I am using right now will not allow me to upload any pictures from our camera.
Lisa here. We just switched computers. The one I was at is newer and hopefully has what it takes to upload the pics we took today.
Kate: her computer was indeed newer. Newer with damage to the usb ports. *sigh* I guess we will have to wait to share the pictures we took today. Here's hoping Cuzco has computers running off of something new than windows 98!
Hang in there, kids, you're in a third world country. I remain amazed they have internet connections at all, never mind for a dollar a day right in your hotel. You have it good!
Glad to here that you got there safely! I can't wait to see the pictures of the Marvin and Kelyn look-alikes! Looking forward to seeing you on Monday! :)
Regarding Claire's question, the answer is that the school board of Dover PA, taken over by radical fundamentalists, tried to demand that their religious beliefs ie. "intelligent design", be taught in their public school alongside evolution, as an alternative "scientific" theory. There was an uproar from the town, which sued the board. The judge found for the town, writing an extremely strong opinion that has apparently discouraged further such attempts by fundamentalists.
For details, see the New York Times article: Judge Rejects Teaching Intelligent Design
Note that the Supreme Court had already ruled that creationism cannot be taught as science in a public school. The case in point revolved around whether intelligent design was creationism in another guise. The judge ruled that it was.
In my opinion, Claire's question illustrates first that foreign media are no better than our own: many sources will publish hype and distortions simply to garner eyeballs. But more importantly, it illustrates that the recent behavior of the U.S. has so damaged our reputation in the rest of the world, that reasonable people are now willing to believe very negative things about us.
One such attempt by a board of education to introduce intelligent design into the classroom inspired a man named Bobby Henderson to write an open letter to the Kansas School Board in which he demanded that if the reasoning for teaching intelligent design in the classroom was to allow for multiple theories on the origin of the world then they must allow for more than just two theories to be taught. His theory, he states, is that the world was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. His open letter has brought him a large following of "Pastafarians". If you haven't already read his letter or seen his site, you can see it at http://www.venganza.org/. All hail the Flying Spaghetti Monster! May we all be touched by his noodley apendage!
On a serious note: though Europe may mock the United States for being a highly religious nation, I find our ability to balance faith and secularism to be one of our greatest strengths. Granted, that balance requires readjustments from time to time and so we have legal battles over creationism vs. evolution or the presence of the Decalogue in our courts of law, but in reality having a balance is far better than having an extreme. Our founding fathers really knew what they were doing. The separation of Church and State is a far better solution than the rapid secularization of Europe or the Fundamentalist Theocracy of the Middle East.
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