Romania Jumps the Shark

They had a good run. But this past week, Romania decided to abandon the teaching of evolution in its public schools, and formally adopt creationism as a key component of the curriculum.

This is big news. After years of merely hypothesizing what great divine gifts would inure to a country that adopted creationism as its official scientific policy, creationist interest groups like the Discovery Institute, Answers In Genesis (led by Ken Ham, who actually sort of resembles “the missing link”), and Uncommon Descent can finally point to a real country as a success story. Yes, Texas, Florida, and other states allegedly flirting with creationism, take heed: someday you, too, could be the next Romania.

But wait, it gets worse – at least, for Romanian children, and the Romanian economy:

Biology has been cut from two hours to one of teaching per week for the final two years in many high schools. In place of evolution, kids are taught more about human ecology and the environment, subjects which one biology teacher says children find boring. [. . . .]

[T]here are new proposals to make all religious classes compulsory for the education system, regardless of the parents’ wishes. All children who do not want to attend Religion classes would attend a Moral and Religious Education class. But there is no one qualified to teach Moral and Religious Education.

For America, though, this is nothing but good news. Count another foreign competitor out for the coming biotech revolution.