For most of my life I had been fairly rabidly of the opinion that this guy spouts. As of the last few years, not so much.
- Our education system is a wreck and I don't think that teaching gibberish in science class can possibly make the results any worse. It's probably better than teaching basically wrong or at least vastly oversimplified stuff with some vague assertion of legitimacy 'because, science.'
- It's probably more dangerous to have a unified and inflexible curriculum defined by a single state and designed to achieve the goals of that state than it is to have a more flexible locally influenced one. I'm now of the opinion that basically the state should mandate no more than that kids somehow learn 'the three R's and provide some basic support for that available to those who wish to use it, and everything else (including science, history, etc) should be left to the student, parent, and community.
- I don't have a real problem with there being individual and regional differences in inputs and outcomes. I simply don't believe that 'uniformity' is very critical and not even all that desirable.
- I don't give a fuck what people in other nations think about us and it absolutely should not define our internal systems. To be honest, I don't think very highly of most of them when it comes to a lot of fairly important things.