Insert foot in mouth in 3, 2, 1...

So, I know for a long time this has been some kind of bitch session here online, and a lot of it seems to be directed against conservatives, and those of you who have known me for a while understand how my experiences at Concordia really made those fundamentalist, evangelical conservatives form the blunt end of the knife with which conservatism kills almost everything intellectual, but I must take a step back. Although I am hardly ceding to home-schooling inbreeding, fiscal adventures accountable to no one but those who are gaining, and social injustice caused by an implicit "moral and racial" superiority, I realized something.

In a study on Latino Culture (here "latino" refers to those living in the United States of hispanic origin, not just those "dirty mexicans immigrants" that I am sure some of you thought of, and I would mention here that 60% of those of Hispanic descent are actually BORN in the UNITED STATES, some of whose families HAVE LIVED HERE FOR GENERATIONS and who had the unfortunate HAPPENSTANCE OF THE BORDER BEING MOVED OVER THEM IN OUR IMPERIALISTIC ZEAL) and religion, The University of Notre Dame found surprising evidence for children of RELIGIOUS families who fare on pare with other students whose families are less religious. Religiosity in the study was defined by two indicators: how often the family attended church services (those RELIGIOUS families attended 1 a week, and those NOT-SO-RELIGIOUS families were those Easter and Christmas Christians we so disdain) and how much importance was placed on faith within the respondents' personal life.

However, students who came from a RELGIOUS background fared better on standardized tests and received higher grades in, of all academic subjects, SCIENCE.

While the study was only aimed at focusing on the LATINO youth, it is hard to swallow as is. And while maybe breaking the subject into those Catholics and Protestants who identified themselves as RELIGIOUS (side note: in another study by Notre Dame, Hispanic Catholics more identified themselves as Democrats, and those Hispanic Protestants were more comfortable identifying themselves as Republicans, no big surprise there) might enlighten us further into the effect of the family's level of CONSERVATISM on these findings, it is curious that the findings would point to this conclusion. One would think, those durn religious folk: they don't believe in evolution, they think the earth is only 4000 years old, and who knows what they think of binary fusion.

Apparently, a lot more than we think the do.

And while I can give many a reason, keep in mind, to explain what might be the main downfallings of this survey (principaly, that while Protestant education is based on more Calvinistic, Puritan and even Lutheran principles that point to education nurturing faith, an idea which has developed into the "closemindedness" through the many different periods of reformation and splitting of the American Church into numerous denominations which, by definition, requires the acceptance of certain "orthodoxies" and the denial of others, whereas many modern Catholic institutions rely heavily on the Ignatian philosophy of education which depends highly on the study of the sciences and the liberal arts, and where education is seen as a nurturing of the entire person, it follows that Hispanics, being the majority Catholic, would maybe perform better in the sciences not depending on the religiosity of their family, but rather on the simple fact the the "religion" that they chose (or that is imposed upon them) inherently gives them a higher "inclination" or at least a more open attitude towards the studying of the sciences), the findings are still interesting.

Interesting enough that, while though all the personal opinions that I bloated this blog with that seems to strongly show my opposition towards the whole conservative movement, I am admitting that maybe not all conservatives are bad. There is the foot in my mouth. I cant promise it will stay there long, because you are sure so easy to make fun of...

Point your finger and make fun of me too.