Creationism and public schools

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Arizona: As many as 15 schools that teach creationism may be participating in the state’s tax credit scholarship program for disabled children or children attending underperforming schools. (Arizona has not released a list of private schools that have received students on this scholarship.)

Arkansas: Responsive Education Solutions operates two campuses in Arkansas that use creationist curricula. (See Texas.)

Colorado: At least eight schools in Douglas County teach creationism while participating in the Douglas County Scholarship Program.

Florida: At least 164 schools teach creationism while participating in the state’s tax credit scholarship programs for disabled children and children from low-income families.

Georgia: At least 34 schools teach creationism while participating in the state’s tax credit scholarship program for disabled children.

Indiana: At least 37 schools teach creationism while participating in the state’s voucher program for children from low-income families.

Louisiana: The Louisiana Science Education Act of 2008 allows teachers to use “supplemental textbooks and other instructional materials to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner,” specifically theories regarding “evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning”—in effect, allowing creationist material inside classroom. It’s no coincidence that the Discovery Institute, a creationist think tank that provides such “supplemental textbooks,” helped write the bill, which the American Association for the Advancement of Science described as an “assault against scientific integrity.”

Ohio: At least 20 schools teach creationism while participating in a tax credit scholarship program for children in underperforming public schools.
Oklahoma: At least five schools teach creationism while participating in a tax credit scholarship program for disabled children.

Tennessee: A 2012 state law, like Louisiana's, permits public school teachers to teach the “scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses” of theories that can “cause controversy,” specifically citing evolution, global warming, and cloning, therebyproviding legal cover for teachers who want to forward creationist pseudoscience.

Texas: The state’s largest charter program, Responsive Ed, receives $82 million in taxpayer money each year, but that hasn’t stopped its schools from adopting acreationist curriculum that seriously misrepresents the science of evolution. These materials wrongly portray the fossil record and the age of Earth as scientifically controversial, assert that there is a lack of “transitional fossils,” and claim evolution is untestable.

Utah: At least five schools teach creationism while participating in a tax-credit scholarship program for disabled children.

Washington, D.C.: At least three schools teach creationism while participating in a tax-credit scholarship program for children from low-income families.

Wisconsin: At least 15 schools teach creationism while participating in a Milwaukee or Racine voucher programs.

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Type: Question • Score: 10 • Views: 5,588 • Replies: 40

@plainoldme,

Creationism is a religious belief and schools that teach it should not be given gov't funding, as per separation of church and state. If those schools are teaching their students that creationism is a science, they should be shut down for fraud, as well.

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@plainoldme,

Not only that, but once we abolish teachers' unions and make teaching a career with miserable financial benefits,
the only people who take public school teaching jobs will be religious nutjobs with rich husbands.

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@FBM,

Quote:

Creationism is a religious belief and schools that teach it should not be given gov't funding

I'd agree, FBM, unless equal weight is afforded the contrary view. Kids are just a whole lot smarter than we usually imagine, could much earlier be introduced gradually to a whole passel of philosophical concept

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@dalehileman,

Well, then you'd have to wind up teaching the views of every religion, as well as those of agnosticism and atheism. If that were taught in something like a Religious Studies class, that would be OK, but if it's being taught as science, that's not because it's not.

1 Reply

@plainoldme,

Are they slipping these things in outside of science class? Like social studies or something?

1 Reply

@rosborne979,

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/01/creationism_in_public_schools_mapped_where_tax_money_supports_alternatives.html

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/01/creationism_in_texas_public_schools_undermining_the_charter_movement.html

Quote:

When public-school students enrolled in Texas’ largest charter program open their biology workbooks, they will read that the fossil record is “sketchy.” That evolution is “dogma” and an “unproved theory” with no experimental basis. They will be told that leading scientists dispute the mechanisms of evolution and the age of the Earth. These are all lies.

The more than 17,000 students in the Responsive Education Solutions charter system will learn in their history classes that some residents of the Philippines were “pagans in various levels of civilization.” They’ll read in a history textbook that feminism forced women to turn to the government as a “surrogate husband.”

Responsive Ed has a secular veneer and is funded by public money, but it has been connected from its inception to the creationist movement and to far-right fundamentalists who seek to undermine the separation of church and state.

Infiltrating and subverting the charter-school movement has allowed Responsive Ed to carry out its religious agenda—and it is succeeding. Operating more than 65 campuses in Texas, Arkansas, and Indiana, Responsive Ed receives more than $82 million in taxpayer money annually, and it is expanding, with 20 more Texas campuses opening in 2014.

1 Reply

@ehBeth,

Grr.

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@FBM,

These cases have to be identified and handled separately. If you notice, those examples of the latest insertion of Creationism are nationwide and pretty much in several US district courts. The first case that will affect (I believe), Knsas,Texas, and Louisiana, is being handled under a case entitled COPE v Kansas Board of Education. COPE is an acronym Citizens for Objective Public EDucation. In this one COPE has stated in its complaint that they are being excluded from practicing thir religion under the "Free Expression " clause of the 1st Amendment. Its kinda strange because all the prvious cases have stated that, under the "Establishment Clause" of the same Amendment, teahing Creationism in Science is the same as establishing a state religion.
ANYWAY, COPE has been dismissed in Kansas in Dec 2014 and now, I understand, the COPEr's have filed an appeal to the Fed District Court. (Apparently to my sources, COPE feels confident that the Fe district Court is conservative and Fundamental enough to reverse the lower court dismissal. Then, we will all be looking for another Supreme Court Test of this whole thing.

SCience always sufferes from this kind of bullshit but, should these cases be found in favor of the Creationism lobby, I hear that a next bunch of steps will be to yank Accreditation of some of the colleges

1 Reply

@farmerman,

It appears that each of these cases will hve to be brought to court region by region. The Pa district (Fed Dist 3) has already ruled based upon the Kitzmiller v Dover SChool District case in 2005.
This will be yet another idiotic cluster **** but NCSE feels that the Discovery Institute and its minions are waaay better prepared for this one. If you notice, they aren't denying that its a religion. They are embracing their beliefs as cores to their science , So we may see a bunch of cases in which the actual data and evidence will be on trial.

SHOULD BE INTERESTING TIMES.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

HERES a map of the US Fed District Court Regions. I was wrong about Kansas, Texas and Louisiana are in District 5

DC is not in the same district as that which is covered under the Dover Case, so we will have to see a bunch of these cases , region by region. I hope the USSC will intercede early in the game and hut this whole crap down

1 Reply

@farmerman,

Wtf. Why isn't the Scopes Trial a legal precedent preventing this sort of misadventure?

Edit: Never mind. I looked up the details on the Scopes trial. It wouldn't serve as a legal precedent.

1 Reply

@FBM,

Good,Tennessee had these "Butler Laws' that made the Scopes trial inevitable and the fact that SCopes LOST didn't help until maybe 25 years later.

We hve a seres of USSC decisions that go bck to the 1950s nd continued till the 1980's THEN, the modern "Intelligent Design" story was cooked up by this old lawyer who wrote a book "Darwin n Trial". It became a manifesto for a newly emboldened bunch of anti-science clowns who wanted to divest themselves of any association with "Theistic Creationism".
They pulled ome really dumass moves like using a "Science textbook" named "OF PANDAS AND PEOPLE" in which the early editions used the word "Creationism or CREATION"
When the ID crowds took over the operations of the movement (After Creationism lost a USSC decision in 1987), the Discovery Institute decided to repaxkage "Of Pandas and People" by carefully editing the book and to remove all words like "Creationism" and replace with Intelligent Design. They failed because they missed the word in several places and, in one place, they didn't remove the od "Creationism" the book eiting algorithm merely blended Inetlligent Design nd Creationism nd "Evolved a new word" , something like" IntelliCreationGentDesignism. The Court case had dun with that one especially since the IDers sore that they hd research going into the new book.

We will have to ait until some group either decides to become a plaintiff and fight the state boards of Ed or, as in the case of Kansas, the IDesr became the plaintiff, trying this new approach wherein they stipulTE TO THEIR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS snd make that the core of their arguments.

Bet you dint have this kind of fun in Korea

1 Reply

@farmerman,

Yeah, I hadn't realized that Scopes actually lost until just a few minutes ago. Rolling Eyes

And I remember "Of Pandas and People." Double Rolling Eyes

Korea has its share of holy-rolling whackjobs and wingnuts. I've encountered more than a few on the subways, buses and street corners. There's one who shows up every couple of weeks on the corner outside my apartment. He accosts passersby with some sort of Bible-thumping nonsense. He's had the good luck not to approach me so far, probably just because he doesn't speak English and assumes I don't speak Korean.

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@FBM,

Quote:

Well, then you'd have to wind up teaching the views of every religion, as well as those of agnosticism and atheism

Yes FBM, exactly. Of course it wold take place over one's entire elementary and high schooling; while necessarily some aspects would have to be severely condensed

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@dalehileman,

Quote:

I'd agree, FBM, unless equal weight is afforded the contrary view.

Theres no "unless". The Constitution is quite clear regarding "the Establishemnet of a state religion"

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@farmerman,

No, Man, teaching about something isn't the same as advocating it

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@dalehileman,

Not in a science class. Save it for church or a comparative religions class.

1 Reply

@dalehileman,

dalehileman wrote:

No, Man, teaching about something isn't the same as advocating it

Doesn't matter. Creationism has been defined by U.S. Courts as a religious view. The same courts ruled that creationism can not be taught in state-run elementary or secondary schools. The reasoning is that attendance in secondary and elementary schools is compulsory and students that young should not be forced to be a captive audience for a particular religious view. In contrast, it is allowable to teach creationism in state-run colleges.

1 Reply

@edgarblythe,

Quote:

Not in a science class

Of course not Ed

0 Replies

Creationism and public schools

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