Mr Iacocca and Mrs Hunholz
Uncommon Descent asks a good question.

Here’s a question: How many people would study biology with interest if we took the Darwin out of it and said, learn what the natural world of life is like without all these theories of how it came to be that way? Who would still be interested?

My kind of question. Learn Nature without theories.

It's really two separate questions.

(1) Would this help to sort out and develop the future professionals?

(2) Would this help non-professionals to pay more attention to biology?

I suspect it would decrease the future pros and increase interest among the rest.

Paid science has VERY LITTLE CONNECTION to actual interest in actual science. It's a fiercely competitive field that requires RELIGIOUS passion and orthodoxy and ascetic 25/8 devotion to getting the grants. Only Darwinian orthodoxy gets the grants. So the best way to attract future orthodox warriors is to emphasize all Darwin and no science.

Now that ALL of "science" has openly and violently and genocidally declared that its single sole solitary purpose is HOLOCAUST, "science" will automatically attract an EXTREMELY specialized type of student. (I suppose it's vaguely conceivably imaginable that one or two paid "scientists" are only 99.9999999999999% committed to obliterating the universe, but the public never hears from them.)

For the non-pro types we need to gather their interest via senses and muscles, specifically taste and smell. Mrs Hunholz, my 2nd grade teacher, was the brilliant master of taste and smell. She always had something cooking in the classroom, and used the food to branch out into job-related skills like baking and chemistry.

A fable from an unrelated industry:

In 1956 Ford was pushing safety, a THEORETICAL concern and an UNPLEASANT concern. Thinking about safety leads to thinking about death. Seat belts, padded dash, recessed controls, indented steering wheel. A Philadelphia Ford dealer named Iacocca realized that safety theory wasn't bringing in his blue-collar customers. He rigged up a more effective campaign.

His salesmen went around to supermarket parking lots and placed a little package of potato chips under the wipers of 'tradable' cars, along with a note saying


The chips are down!

Would you take $____ for your car?

We're selling '56 Fords for $56 a month.

Come see us!


Fords started selling fast in Philly, and corporate management brought Iacocca to Detroit.

What's the key? Muscles and taste and hearing and sight. Customers opened the package with their hands (rip!) and chewed the chips (crunch, crunch) and enjoyed the salt and grease. While they were crunching and enjoying, they were reading the note and thinking about the deal.

= = = = =

Irrelevant sidenote: $56 a month sounds like a lot of money for 'blue-collar' neighborhoods. It would be $560 in today's money. But according to census figures, manufacturing workers had a median income around $6000 = $60k in today's money. So they could afford it. Before the offshoring coup, blue-collar was solidly middle class.

Labels: Experiential education

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