Irony

Last night, I had the honor of attending a reception for our school district's AP Scholars. An "AP Scholar" has passed 3 or more Advanced Placement exams with scores of 3 or higher. It's exciting. It's an honor. It's also an accomplishment. The AP classes and tests are meant to be on par with freshman-level college classes. An ambitious high school student could, in theory, earn enough "AP credits" to bypass his freshman year at many major universities. Those reaching "AP Scholar" status comprise less than 2% of the students in the nation. Our district offers AP classes in several sciences, calculus, history, English composition, foreign language, computer science, probably other subjects as well.

The young men and women who were there have bright futures ahead of them. They listened as the guest speaker, our local state representative, mapped out those futures, with an emphasis on forward thinking and change and a belief in yourself and your abilities.

This morning, I opened the daily paper to see that the state Governor "Wants to add Intelligent Design to science classes. He thinks the concept is 'valid scientific theory'".

Never mind the fact that the State Board of Education voted down a measure in 2003 to add stickers to current SCIENCE books and reprint future version to include ID. He wants it back in the main arena, and elections are coming up.

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the·o·ry P Pronunciation Key (th-r, thîr)
n. pl. the·o·ries
A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested OR is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.