Basil Venitis asserts that science and State should separate. Science is increasingly being manipulated by those who try to use it to justify political choices based on their ethical preferences and who are willing to suppress evidence of conflict between those preferences and the underlying reality. This problem is clearly seen in two policy domains, health care and climate policy. When we abandon the values and practices of science, or pervert them to support a predetermined agenda, we elevate appearances and subordinate facts.
Since the only proper purpose of government is the protection of individual rights, it is improper for the government to be involved in scientific research, whether by financing it or by overseeing and regulating it. A free society requires a total separation of science and state. All scientific and technological research should be privately conducted and privately financed. There should be no government research laboratories or government scientific agencies. This, of course, would be in radical contrast to the state of affairs today, in which basic research is predominantly funded by government and overseen by the government agencies administering the funds.
The European Commission has launched Scientix, a new web-portal targeted towards teachers, researchers, policy makers, local actors, parents, and anyone interested in science education. Scientix will give access to teaching materials, research results and policy documents from European science education projects financed by the European Union and by various national initiatives. The new platform will facilitate regular dissemination and sharing of news, know-how, and best practices in science education across the European Union.
Maire Geoghegan-Quinn, European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science points out Scientix will allow every science teacher and student to benefit from excellent teaching materials developed by European and national research projects. So Scientix will contribute both to inspiring young people with science and to maximising value for every euro Europe spends on science education. It will also be a place for everybody interested in science education to exchange news and views.
The philosophy of the platform can be summarised by the following keywords: search, find and engage. The information and services provided cover several dimensions of science education and will attract all kind of actors involved in science education: teachers, researchers, policy makers, local actors, parents, and young people. For teachers for example, Scientix has collected teaching materials from hundreds of European projects and will make them available in all European languages upon request.
This new portal is available in six languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Polish and will give access to the main findings of European science education projects financed by the European Union under the 6th and 7th Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development (Directorate General Research), the Lifelong Learning Programme (Directorate General Education and Culture) and various national initiatives.
However Scientix is not only a website! Several events and workshops will be organised in the next 3-years. The main event will be the Scientix conference May 6 - 8, 2011, which will promote networking among the science and education community and provide feedback on the services offered online. A monthly newsletter will also be sent out to provide information about updates on the portal.
Scientix is carried out by European Schoolnet(EUN) on behalf of the European Commission. European Schoolnet(EUN) is a network of 31 Ministries of Education in Europe and beyond. EUN was created more than 10 years ago with the aim to bring about innovation in teaching and learning to its key stakeholders: Ministries of Education, schools, teachers and researchers.
Basil Venitis favors ending government involvement in education. Any influence by the state over education corrupts its goals, and therefore the ability of its graduates to think and reason. Only a full separation of education and state allows for parents to choose how best to equip their children to function in the world. Anything less is a violation of the parents', and child's, rights.
The fundamental evil of government grants is the fact that men are forced to pay for the support of ideas diametrically opposed to their own. This is a profound violation of an individual's integrity and conscience. The Constitution forbids a governmental establishment of religion, properly regarding it as a violation of individual rights. Since a man's beliefs are protected from the intrusion of force, the same principle should protect his reasoned convictions and forbid governmental establishments in the field of thought.
The profiteers of government grants are usually among the loudest protesters against the pseudotyranny of money: science and the culture, they cry, must be liberated from the arbitrary private power of the rich. But there is this difference: the rich can neither buy an entire nation nor force one single individual.
If a rich man chooses to support cultural activities, he can do so only on a very limited scale, and he bears the consequences of his actions. If he does not use his judgment, but merely indulges his irrational whims, he achieves the opposite of his intention: his projects and his proteges are ignored or despised in their professions, and no amount of money will buy him any influence over the culture.
Like vanity publishing, his venture remains a private waste without any wider significance. The culture is protected from him by three invincible elements: choice, variety, competition. If he loses his money in foolish ventures, he hurts no one but himself. And, above all: the money he spends is his own; it is not extorted by force from unwilling victims.
The growth of the welfare state is approaching the stage where virtually the only money available for scientific research will be government money. Taxation is destroying private resources, while government money is flooding and taking over the field of research. In these conditions, a scientist is morally justified in accepting government grants, so long as he opposes all forms of welfare statism. As in the case of scholarship recipients, a scientist does not have to add self-martyrdom to the injustices he suffers.
Government research grants, for the most part, have no strings attached, i.e., no controls over the scientist's intellectual and professional freedom. When and if the government attempts to control the scientific or political views of the recipients of grants, that will be the time for men of integrity to quit. At present, they are still free to work, but more than any other professional group, they should be on guard against the gradual, insidious growth of pressures to conform and of tacit control-by-intimidation, which are implicit in such conditions.
No comments:
Post a Comment