Wednesday, June 29, 2011

The beautiful question, re-visited

Last week I looked at the question "should evolution be taught in schools" which was asked of Miss USA contenders, the answers were surprising and overwhelmingly missed the point of science education. Here is another way of explaining the problem with those answers using humour (bordering on ridicule) - see if you think it communicates the problem better.



PS. I like the way that they capture the different responses from the different state representatives in the same "style" as the original answers (including the sensible ones)

4 comments:

Charlene said...

Oh boy. I grew up in Indiana and now I am sad.

I am so happy I am not beautiful.

Steve Borthwick said...

C, At least Indiana wasn't the worst at least she said she didn't know; Alabama, Alaska and Mississippi were the biggest fails - proving that what you "believe" is purely an accident of geography and nothing to do with what is true.

Lisa said...

This is great, Steve. Although I wonder why they ask beauty queens this type of question at all - they seem to have already declared their intentions. Better questions would be things like: is it ever okay to wear hosiery instead of leaving the legs bare? What was Chanel's must-have nail colour from the Autumn of 2009?

If these girls don't have thoughtful, sensible responses to the evolution question, I think they are signalling that they will do better with a different kind of question.

Steve Borthwick said...

Lisa, I guess you're right but evolution isn't exactly an obscure topic, why would anyone not be even slightly interested in how and why they exist at all. I'm trying to think of something that lies at the intersection of fashion and evolution, there's not a lot I'll grant you, perhaps the only thing would be how we get toy dogs.