Gord's Notebook : Creationists Agenda To Indoctrinate Students In Public Schools In America With A Fundamentalist Biblical Theology

Bill Nye the Science Guy debates Creationist Ken Ham

The growing threat by Creationists and Biblical fundamentalism to public schools and education in America in general from pre-school, through elementary to High School to university and beyond .

...Four years ago, a conservative bloc on the state (Texas) school board pushed through amendments to science standards that call for students to “analyze and evaluate” some of the basic principles of evolution. Science educators and advocates worry that this language can be used as a back door for teaching creationism...

Quote from: Creationists on Texas Panel for Biology Textbooks The new York Times, Sept. 29, 2013

A reemergence of vouchers supported by Republicans and conservatives as a means to influence and reshape school curriculum and to get more children into more conservative Christian schools.

...In North Carolina, the state legislature recently passed a bill to divert $10 million of taxpayer money meant for public schools to private schools, including those that “provide an education that is Christ-centered” and teach “the truth of scripture” with “Bible-based facts,” such as: “dinosaurs and humans co-existed on Earth; slave-masters generally treated their slaves well; in some areas, the KKK fought the decline in morality by using the sign of the cross; and gay people have no more claims to special rights than child molesters or rapists.”

Creationism, at taxpayer expense: Secrets of the GOP’s frightening new school voucher schemes It's on: GOP efforts to shift tax dollars to private schools that teach anti-science nonsense must be stopped now JEFF BRYANT, Feb.3,2014, Salon.com

Rightwing Watch: Even Pat Robertson Attacks Creationism as A Joke

Published on 5 Feb 2014
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content...
Right Wing Watch reports on the extreme rhetoric and activities of key right-wing

figures and organizations by showing their views in their own words. In this video,

Pat Robertson says he disagrees with Young Earth Creationism and considers it a

"joke."

Bill Nye in the interview below explains why he is willing to take part in debate with Creationist . It is a matter of education versus indoctrination that is science and scientific fact and reality versus indoctrination into religious beliefs based upon faith and a literal interpretation of the Bible.

The pro-creationist want to misguide the public by framing the so called debate as if the two sides were both equally plausible as scientific explanations of the origins of the universe and of all living things.

Another part of this false equivalency is that only one of these views is the correct one that is one either accepts creationism and God's role in it or one rejects God, the Bible , Jesus and Christian theology and morality etc. in favor of evolution .
This is only true if one accepts that theism and evolution are completely incompatible.

It is rather that the strict literalist view of the Bible held by Christian Creationist such as Ken Ham is incompatible with evolution .

The Young Turks : Creationist Signs at the Bill Nye / Ken Ham Debate

Published on 5 Feb 2014
The debate between Bill Nye (aka 'The Science Guy) and Creation Museum president Ken Ham has people (from fundamentalist Christians to Atheists and everything in between) buzzing today. What should we make of the signs creationists made for those who believe in evolution? http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/messag... Does conservative Christian 700 Club host Pat Robertson believe believers should reject fossil records? Ana Kasparian and John Iadarola (host, TYT University and Common Room) break it down on The Young Turks.

So in these next couple articles cited here we get an illustration of what the real agenda of the pro-creationists and Christian Fundamentalists is that is to find ways to teach Creationism in the public funded schools including those supposedly private schools which are in various ways financed by the public. Once they can get creationism taught as at least a competing scientific theory to evolution they can then introduce parts of the Christian Bible into these schools and thereby teach what they believe ought to be considered acceptable moral values .

The goal at the end of the day is the indoctrination of as many young people as possible into the acceptance of a literal fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible and a complete and utter rejection of evolutionary theory and the science which follows from it especially where that science might contradict the beliefs and moral behaviours promulgated by Holy Scripture.

Map: Publicly Funded Schools That Are Allowed to Teach Creationism.Slate, Jan. 26, 2014

Thousands of schools in states across the country can use taxpayer money to cast doubt on basic science.

By Chris Kirk

A large, publicly funded charter school system in Texas is teaching creationism to its students, Zack Kopplin recently reported in Slate. Creationist teachers don’t even need to be sneaky about it—the Texas state science education standards, as well as recent laws in Louisiana and Tennessee, permit public school teachers to teach “alternatives” to evolution. Meanwhile, in Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Arizona, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, taxpayer money is funding creationist private schools through state tuition voucher or scholarship programs. As the map below illustrates, creationism in schools isn’t restricted to schoolhouses in remote villages where the separation of church and state is considered less sacred. If you live in any of these states, there’s a good chance your tax money is helping to convince some hapless students that evolution (the basis of all modern biological science, supported by everything we know about geology, genetics, paleontology, and other fields) is some sort of highly contested scientific hypothesis as credible as “God did it.”

Creationists on Texas Panel for Biology Textbooks The new York Times, Sept. 29, 2013

In the state whose governor, Rick Perry, boasted as a candidate for president that his schools taught both creationism and evolution, the State Board of Education, which includes members who hold creationist views, helped nominate several members of the textbook review panel. Others were named by parents and educators. Prospective candidates could also nominate themselves. The state’s education commissioner, Michael L. Williams, a Perry appointee and a conservative Republican, made the final appointments to the 28-member panel. Six of them are known to reject evolution.

...Karen Beathard, a senior lecturer in the department of nutrition and food science at Texas A&M University, who wrote in a review of a textbook ... that “Students should have the opportunity to use their critical thinking skills to weigh the evidence between evolution and ‘creation science.’ ”

In reviews of other textbooks, panel members disputed the scientific evidence, questioning, for example, whether the fossil record actually demonstrates a process of mutation and natural selection over billions of years. “The fossil record can be interpreted in other ways than evolutionary with equal justification,” one reviewer wrote. Among the anti-evolution panelists are Ide Trotter, a chemical engineer, and Raymond G. Bohlin, a biologist and fellow of the Discovery Institute.

By questioning the science — often getting down to very technical details — the evolution challengers in Texas are following a strategy increasingly deployed by others around the country.

There is little open talk of creationism. Instead they borrow buzzwords common in education, “critical thinking,” saying there is simply not enough evidence to prove evolution.

If textbooks do not present alternative viewpoints or explain what they describe as “the controversy,” they say students will be deprived of a core concept of education — learning how to make up their own minds.

Historically, given the state’s size, Texas’ textbook selections have had an outsize impact on what ended up in classrooms throughout the country. That influence is waning somewhat because publishers can customize digital editions and many states are moving to adopt new science standards with evolution firmly at their center.

...In North Carolina, the state legislature recently passed a bill to divert $10 million of taxpayer money meant for public schools to private schools, including those that “provide an education that is Christ-centered” and teach “the truth of scripture” with “Bible-based facts,” such as: “dinosaurs and humans co-existed on Earth; slave-masters generally treated their slaves well; in some areas, the KKK fought the decline in morality by using the sign of the cross; and gay people have no more claims to special rights than child molesters or rapists.”

What knits these news stories together is a common cause: school vouchers. Vouchers – also called scholarships, tax credits and other variations on a theme – turn public dollars for education into private coin to be expended as parents wish and legislators allow.

Liberals tend to laugh off this kind of news as aberrations from fly-over country. But they need to be aware there is a concerted effort underfoot to take school voucher schemes like these nationwide.

...a new bill introduced by Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.... “would take about $24 billion – or about 41 percent – of current federal spending on elementary and secondary public schools, and allow states to decide whether to give the lowest-income families the money as individual scholarships to pay for private school tuition, or to attend a public school outside the child’s traditional neighborhood zone, or a charter school.”

The bill would hand over “about $2,100 in federal money” for each eligible child, based on family income.

Nearly simultaneous to the Alexander bill, Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., also introduced a new bill to “provide federally funded vouchers to children with disabilities, children living on military bases, and children living in impoverished areas,” according to Scott’s official website.

Republican Party leadership argues “We have plans to improve our education and training systems so you have the choice to determine where your kids go to school.”

Then Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., in his address stridently called for solutions from “the marketplace,” promoting his “economic freedom zones” that allow for “school choice” and give parents an “educational tax credit” because parents, “not the government,” know “what’s best” for kids.

The vouchers, by whatever name, are being sold to the American people as a way to “rescue” students – especially those who live in poverty or have disabilities – from “failing” public schools so they can attend a privately run school at the expense of taxpayers.

...When corruption is not the game voucher schools are into, religious indoctrination often sets the agenda.

Zack Kopplin, whose research contributed to the Slate article cited above, “documented over 300 voucher schools, in nine states and the District of Columbia, which are receiving public money, and are teaching creationism in their science classes. The program where [he] discovered the most creationist voucher schools was in Florida, where [he] discovered 164 schools.”

In Louisiana’s statewide school voucher scheme, Kopplin found “at least 20 schools who use a creationist curriculum or blatantly promote creationism on their websites. These 20 schools have been awarded 1,365 voucher slots and can receive as much as $11,602,500 in taxpayer money annually.”

In the meantime, voucher schools rarely if ever show evidence of improving the academic outcomes of children.

Education historian Diane Ravitch recently looked into the academic track record of school vouchers and found evaluations have not shown “any test score advantage for students who get vouchers.”

Education research experts at the National Education Policy Center have examined loads of reports and determined that “even the most dedicated pro-voucher researchers have been unable to find clear evidence of superior performance by students attending private schools as part of a voucher program.” And vouchers “do not improve college enrollment rates.”

Also there’s little evidence school vouchers generally represent a systemic way to “rescue” students from underperforming schools. In voucher schools in Louisiana, for instance, nearly half of the students in the state’s program last year used voucher money to attend “schools with performance scores in the D to F range of the state’s grading scale” – hardly “a move up from the back of the line” for these children.

...A Political Strategy Exploiting Children

Rather than improving the prospects of students and the performance of schools, what Republican proposals for vouchers have most to do with is politics.

As Valerie Strauss of The Washington Post noted some time ago, messaging behind the push for school vouchers has shifted from educational effectiveness to moral imperative.

Because recent voucher research reveals they “do not have a strong effect on students’ academic achievement,” Strauss noted, “Proponents have shifted their rhetoric away from academic impact and instead highlight parent choice and other issues.”

So now, as Stephanie Simon reported at Politico, “calling for more charter schools, vouchers and tax credits” is a tactic Republicans are eager to use “to attract black and Latino voters.”

For sure, Simon noted, “Helping parents pay private school tuition fits with the party’s mantra that the government works best when it gets out of the way and lets the free market flourish. But top strategists say it’s more than that: Talking about helping poor minority children softens the GOP’s image … Plus, the photo ops are great.”