…and this is a 
Here's an educational opportunity for everyone!
The Community College of Rhode Island [CCRI] has proudly announced that this fall, a "reiki master" will be holding a seminar on "crystal and mineral healing" at the college. This, we're told, is
…a type of alternative therapy that involves laying crystals or gemstones on the body. Each student will experience a crystal therapy session and get a really good idea about how it changes your energy and rebalances you.
This instructor at CCRI also does "Cranio Sacral Therapy," and uses such advanced quackery as "Bio Magnets," "Light Life Tools," "Dowsing," and "Pendulums" She assures students that she is also a teacher and practitioner of many other alternative healing methods, and says that crystals have their own "intrinsic energy," and will "interact with points on the body's energy field, known as chakras, to promote balance and well-being." "Each crystal has its own properties and attributes when laid on the body with a specific chakra," she says. This collection of talents puts her well up in the tree with the top woo-woos, but she's teaching at CCRI.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Colleges all over the place are peddling this nonense, and you can tell how administrators are thinking: it's not about providing a good education, it's all about what the students will pay for…and if they'll pay for cheap, meaningless crap, so much the better for short-term profitability. Oh, and long-term damage to the school's reputation? Let the next chancellor or president or board worry about that.
So someone wrote to the Community College of Rhode Island, and Richard H. Coren, Director of Marketing, Communications and Publications replied.
Let that sink in. A complaint was made about the garbage content of courses at the college, and the Director of Marketing wrote back. Marketing. Damme. Let me tell you, when the academic revolution comes, it's the marketing drones who have the temerity to pontificate on curriculum and content who are going to get shoveled into the "B" Ark first.
Anyway, so Mr Coren, snake-buggering Director of Marketing to Morons, replies:
Students told us they wanted to further their knowledge of alternative healing methods, and the course was designed to introduce students to the practice of crystal and mineral healing. By offering the class, the college and its noncredit arm, CWCE, do not endorse the practice as science; we are simply responding to demand in the community for personal development courses such as this.
It's not alternative "healing". It's not "personal development". It's lies and bullshit. And seriously, there's a point beyond which what students want doesn't matter. My students wish there wasn't a calculus and statistics requirement for a degree in biology; tough. Some students might want a credit for watching a five-minute video on youtube; no way. We're supposed to have standards, and an education is supposed to mean something.
But no, we've got marketing directors who see a fast buck in selling out academic integrity.
Let's not blame only short-sighted bean-counters at the college level, though. Here's what we have to look forward to: pernicious effects of NCLB, a program which neglects science and encourages mindless teaching-to-the-test, has devastated science education.
It is time to acknowledge that there has been an unprecedented and precipitous decline in science teaching and learning as a consequence of the focus and implementation of No Child Left Behind. We do not need any more commissions or studies to tell us what is strikingly evident -- children of the NCLB era, who entered Kindergarten in 2003 and had little or no science education for the next seven years, are not going to do well in science in middle school or beyond. We are losing an entire generation to science illiteracy.
We're already beginning to see the consequences.
In 2009, PISA found that 15-year-old U.S. students ranked 17th of 34 developed countries in science and 25th of 34 in math. The same study revealed that the U.S. has among the most unequal performance in the world, with achievement levels highly dependent on socio-economic status. Low-income and minority communities are especially hard-hit by lack of access to high-quality science resources. The results from the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress drive home the severity of the problem - only 18 percent of New York City's 4th graders and 13 percent of 8th graders performed at or above the proficient level in science.
Over the next six years, as "Generation NCLB" goes through high school, we can expect banner headlines about further drops in science learning and fewer students taking advanced level courses in biology, chemistry, and physics. That will be a precursor to the hue-and-cry from colleges, four years later, about the need for more remedial science and the falling number of American students majoring in sciences of all types, and then a renewed clamor from employers who need appropriately educated workers but cannot find them.
Maybe Mr Coren and my university's Center for Spirituality and Healing are being foresighted and wise. They're cultivating the perfect curriculum for a generation of students who lack critical thinking skills, who know nothing about science, and just want to be pandered to with pseudoscience for the gullible.
(Also on FtB)
Education
Comments
Posted by: DeePhlat
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August 24, 2011 1:44 PM
Look on the bright side, maybe all these bumbling NCLB students can remove the biologist glut so my chances of getting a job aren't astronomical.
Posted by: bhutta
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August 24, 2011 2:07 PM
WOW, Center for spirituality and Healing....these departments exist?????and at your university????iv never seen/imagined something like this in Campuses here in Canada. I cant believe how such junk could ever be allowed to exist on campuses....wow,jut wow.
Posted by: maggotpunk
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August 24, 2011 2:25 PM
I LOVE CRYSTALS!!! Every morning I put magical crystals in my coffee and it magically turns the slightly bitter coffee into one that is sweet. IT'S THE POWER OF CRYSTALS!!!! Have your science explain that genius.
Posted by: titmouse
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August 24, 2011 2:39 PM
NCLB is a variation on Scientology's "management by statistics." No one can be trusted to do their job anymore, so you have to collect performance data on yourself to send up the food chain, so the decider can decide stuff. Kinda sucks that the data collection takes up 30% of your time, making it real hard to do your actual job.
From here:
Posted by: pumpkinhilldesigns
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August 24, 2011 2:59 PM
I work in a High School.
Last week there was a four of spades on the floor outside of our main office. Seemed like litter so I picked it up.
Upon walking into office I was greeted by six faculty members who were surprised that I would have done that. For some reason they thought the four of spade card was going to bring bad luck so they had seen it and left it on the ground.
I was confused because:
1. If you believe in bad luck it was not very nice to just leave it there for for one of our students
2. The four of spades is not even part of any bad luck myth. So even if you believe in bad luck this isn't even part of that.
Posted by: Prfesser
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August 24, 2011 3:04 PM
Yep, real education (that which requires reasoning, a la Heinlein) is on the way out. I mean... damn, the real stuff has answers, and there are right answers and wrong ones! And you don't get credit for wrong answers, even if it lowers your self esteem!!
Imitation education (that which merely requires scholarship... or not even that) is just so groovy...
There is a state university that has a *senior* nursing course which states in the catalog: "A specific complementary healing modality (therapeutic touch) will be fully examined and practiced...". Yep, the same stuff that nine-year-old Emily Rosa demonstrated to be woo. This place gives out GRADUATE degrees with one hand and bullshit with the other.
Then again, it's in Kentucky... 'nuff said.
Posted by: Peter H
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August 24, 2011 3:53 PM
PZ,
You have this posted under "academics;" I suggest you create the category "batshit crazy posing as academics."
Posted by: Peter H
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August 24, 2011 3:57 PM
And, with reference to the "B" Ark, recall that is was / will be the mindless jerks in the marketing division who will first against the wall when the revolution came / comes. (Not yet sure which side of that time warp we're currently on, so tenses become a bit problematic.)
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/AZfer4pmkeHRcR4LsRPvCWJzGw--#f3717
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August 24, 2011 3:59 PM
"By offering the class, the college and its noncredit arm..."
It's a BS non-credit class. Lots of community colleges offer these kinds of things. This has nothing to do with an actual credit class and has nothing to do with anything involving a degree at the college. They probably offer a class in learning how to play bridge too but you can't take it to replace your calculus class.
Posted by: russellseitz
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August 24, 2011 4:23 PM
As the Life Force is greatest in the largest animals, Rhode Island Community College should insist their Reiki Master amplify his healing crystal's impact on the human aura by having an elephant stand on the head of the patient, allowing the Third Eye to open and the crystal energy can safely flow into the emerging brain.
Plenty of paper towels should be provided.
Posted by: roland
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August 24, 2011 4:24 PM
Maybe if the students want a figure-pooping course they do that too. That would also create a buzz.
Posted by: Timberwoof
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August 24, 2011 4:29 PM
Yabbut no one expects bridge and recreational games to have any value outside of entertainment. Teaching this sort of alternative medicine crap, even not for credit, borrows from the college's credibility. After this semester's classes, we'll see in the CV of the woo-peddler that they have taught at an accredited institute of higher learning.
Between supply-side economics, cost-accounting, and the Dominionist Tea Party, I get the feeling that the United States is pretty much done. We're living at the end of a golden age; it will not last.
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/6qNQm9cckpclChgFpr4uurRwe64-#b9d25
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August 24, 2011 5:12 PM
"...a type of alternative therapy that involves laying crystals or gemstones on the body."
Yet more proof that we are still living in medieval times!
Posted by: Booker
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August 24, 2011 5:22 PM
@#2
In Canada -- Vancouver Community College
http://bit.ly/qyC52T
Crystals and Crystal Healing 1
Starts in October.
Posted by: attorney
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August 24, 2011 5:33 PM
If I stay after class, will this wizard instruct me in how to turn lead into gold?
Posted by: Kemist
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August 24, 2011 5:40 PM
Nope.
That's the other wizard's class. Alchemy 101.
The one where they teach you how to make a philospher's stone.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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August 24, 2011 5:50 PM
It only takes a 13-year-old to refute reiki/therapeutic touch.
Posted by: Jeanette
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August 24, 2011 6:04 PM
Yeah, my school offers nursing credit for people who take classes on "holistic healing" that include reiki, homeopathy, acupuncture etc. Pisses me off, especially as a nursing student myself.
Posted by: H.H.
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August 24, 2011 6:07 PM
My alma mater, Ohio University, has a whole college dedicated to Osteopathic Medicine, which is of dubious value. Yeah, woo is mainstream, unfortunately. I have family members who are advocates for homeopathy. I've tried showing them the errors of their ways, but unfortunately once a person becomes convinced a sham therapy "works" it's nearly impossible to explain to them why it really doesn't.
Posted by: Haley's Comet
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August 24, 2011 7:56 PM
First of all, I know a nursing student named Jeanette who reads Pharyngula, and I'm pretty sure you are her. Small world.
If that is the case, what the hell is a secular, state university doing funding woo classes?!
Posted by: stargleamer
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August 24, 2011 8:21 PM
"My students wish there wasn't a calculus and statistics requirement for a degree in biology; tough".
If there had been a "calculus and statistics requirement" to becoming a naturalist on the HMS Beagle", would we have ever read "Origin of Species?". Something to ponder.
Posted by: Peter H
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August 24, 2011 8:34 PM
Given the glimmerings of natural selection without any substantive knowledge of genetics, to what portion of their data would Wallace or Darwin have applied calculus or statistics?
Posted by: geocatherder
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August 24, 2011 9:16 PM
Ooh, lets take them at their word. I have a very pretty brecciated jasper cabochon that broke. Do you suppose they could heal it? Likewise, I have a couple of fluorite cabs with cracks. Do you suppose they could heal the cracks?Posted by: Paul Burnett
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August 24, 2011 9:47 PM
"We are losing an entire generation to science illiteracy."
We have already lost a generation to science iliteracy: The generation of home-schooled children whose parents want their children to be as ignorant as they are; the generation of children whose minds have been stunted by the child abuse of fundagelical brainwashing, "Sunday School"; the children who have grown up and become voters who vote for morons like Bachman and Perry and other Rethuglicans...
Posted by: fancyflyer
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August 24, 2011 10:55 PM
#24 Paul: Yes indeed. It's the legacy of the loony. They have to pass the ignorance down to posterity along with their genes. Our modern America might look to Darwin like an island with many kinds of fat snails. Scary possibility there.
Posted by: Amphiox, OM
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August 24, 2011 11:10 PM
As learning is a lifelong endeavor, we have not "lost" any generation so long as they have not yet all died.
It's an uphill battle, though.
Posted by: Julia_L
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August 24, 2011 11:46 PM
Science, Science, Science
I'm so sick of you pro-education people.
Wasn't it SCIENCE that gave us nuclear weapons without the social controls to keep us from using them?
Wasn't it SCIENCE that pushed off the industrial revolution that gave us the ability to foul the planet with enough waste to kill ourselves through (pick one or more) climate change, biodiversity and food web destruction, genetically engineered super-pathogens used as WMDs?
Wasn't it SCIENCE that ruined the pleasant and relatively harmless untruth that we were the center of the universe and that it existed solely for our wellbeing and pleasure?
Wasn't it SCIENCE that took off the time tested caps on population and consumption giving us our current geometric trajectory to destruction?
SCIENCE has placed our baby civilization on a rocket-sled, pointed it towards the cliff and lit the fuse.
And your answer to these and other choice problems is.......MORE SCIENCE!!!
Bah
Go ahead, ask me for my solution.....
I HAVEN'T GOT ONE.
I don't have to have one. I'm on the Internet.
My position is hopeless, but not serious.
Posted by: flatlander
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August 25, 2011 12:18 AM
No pyramids in the course? They're using crystals but not pyramids? This is not a serious course. Everyone knows crystal energy resonates too weekly to be effective on humans unless the resonance is amplified by placing the crystals under pyramids made of earth-substances with magnetic properties. Everyone knows this. It's not a serious course.
Posted by: Pen
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August 25, 2011 1:54 AM
Wait, I'm new here.
First, should I be doing something other than this? Should I have introduced or some such?
And also, (I'm bad at telling these things)-is Julia_L joking or not?
Posted by: abelundercity
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August 25, 2011 5:02 AM
So I really shouldn't bother with that elective course in snake handling? Probably just as well.
Then STFU.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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August 25, 2011 6:06 AM
Apparently not, but since she made a drive-by comment and hasn't been back in several hours, it's difficult to tell.
Posted by: Blot
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August 25, 2011 6:47 AM
Julia_L is joking I think. Seems unlikely to me that even an anti-science person is going to put their complaints as
There are plenty of indications that it's an attempt at satire, although there's always a chance it isn't.
Posted by: barefoothiker
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August 25, 2011 9:45 AM
Keep in mind that the "B" Ark folks were the only ones who survived. ;)
Posted by: Peter H
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August 25, 2011 10:26 AM
@ #33
Demonstrates that Ambrose Bierce was right all along; the telephone is the invention of the devil.
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/AZfer4pmkeHRcR4LsRPvCWJzGw--#f3717
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August 25, 2011 11:15 AM
whenever I read "we lost a whole generation to..." I just laugh. What percentage of Darwin's generation was lost to believing in creationism? What percentage of Einstein's generation was lost to not even knowing f=ma? To lose a generation you have to lose 100% of it. We haven't done that.
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawlw4oH0l6k2YD0NCQUeu7nC2owgujUl77U
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August 25, 2011 1:50 PM
H.H. - from your second link: "As medical science developed, osteopathy gradually incorporated all its theories and practices [2]. Today, except for additional emphasis on musculoskeletal diagnosis and treatment, the scope of osteopathy is identical to that of medicine. The percentage of practitioners who use osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT) and the extent to which they use it have been falling steadily."
My doctor is an osteopath. When my blood tests a few years ago indicated that my serum cholesterol was too high and I was pre-diabetic, he offered statins, but said he preferred to try diet first (I already exercised a lot). We discussed diet, and I made some changes(1), and my blood chemistry looks great. No laying on of hands except the usual doctor stuff.
Osteopathy in the US has tried hard to dump the woo, which is why they are basically identical to, you know. Real doctors.
(1) Lean meat, fish and veggie oils for fat, fruits and veggies. Whole grains only. Lost 12 pounds, no wobbly knees if I skip a meal, total cholesterol 149, triglycerides 83, etc.
Kermit
Posted by: SteveM
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August 25, 2011 2:21 PM
re Julia_L
No! SCIENCE doesn't do anything. All things are done by people who might justify their actions with SCIENCE but they could be wrong. All in your list are actions by people justifying themselves with SCIENCE, they are not the actions of SCIENCE itself.