The state of Florida has a reputation among some people as being full of brain-dead morons. News stories like this Orlando Sentinel article do nothing to change that impression:

When Evans High School students bend their heads to take the 2008 Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, dozens of community members will bow their heads, too—in prayer.

A group of about 40 churchgoers hopes that God’s power will do what studying has not for the struggling Pine Hills school: raise its state-issued letter grade above the F it received the past two years.

“Once you’ve done all you can do, you put it in the Lord’s hands,” said the Rev. Michael Kimbrough, pastor of Rising Sun Baptist Church in Pine Hills, who is organizing the prayer chain.

Florida has been in the news recently as the state Board of Education debated over new science standards that would require teaching the Theory of Evolution for the first time (it wasn’t a requirement previously). Around a half-dozen local school boards had folks pushing to have Evolution banned and/or ID/Creationism inserted into the science curriculum. Is it any wonder then that when faced with schools not making the grade the solution some folks come up with isn’t to improve the quality of the education, but to throw up their hands and declare they’ve done everything they can do and it’ll take a miracle from God to keep their kids from being total idiots?

Every now and then someone asks me, “What’s the harm in letting people believe what they want to believe?” I’d say the above is at least one very good example of the harm.