Ignatz

Monday, January 24, 2005

Darwin-hating

This article from near York PA is hilarious to me. Not content with the stickers that may seem sufficient to weak-kneed Georgians, the school board there has decreed that students will receive a one-minute prepared statement to the effect that evolution is just a theory, Darwin didn't know everything you know, and you should ask your parents what the origin of life is, and now back to your regularly-scheduled "Standards-based" curriculum. But because the school system's science teachers rebelled against reading the statement, the school board sends its own officials into the classrooms to read the statement and then scurry away before students can ask any questions. It sounds like a Monty Python skit to me. And I love one student's reaction: if they're going to spend a minute teaching us that theory, they should teach every theory, such as Rastafarianism. Heh heh. Rastafarianism. (Link via Howard Bashman)

posted by sam 7:28 AM 3 comments

3 Comments:

I e-mailed this to the Dover school board.
Unsurpisingly, I didn't get a reply.

I feel compelled to write to let you know that I find it appalling that you
are deliberately lying to your students when your primary responsibility
is to educate them. The sentence "Gaps in the theory exist for which
there is no evidence" is patently false. If you purport to teach science,
then your responsibility is to teach science as it is, not as certain
people wish it to be. That is why you have Academic Standards in the
first place.

Sincerely,
Paul Dirks

By Paul Dirks, at 10:07 AM

Love the Monty Python idea. I am wondering who would be sent to explain to the class that there's no evidence backing up evolution -- I am guessing Eric Idle though I could see Terry Jones in that role too -- Cleese would of course be the superintendent of schools and probably monitoring the whole thing by remote camera. The science teacher? Maybe Michael Palin.

By The Modesto Kid, at 10:40 AM

Oh and Chapman would of course be the head of the PTA, the one who originally petitioned to get creationism on the science curriculum.

By The Modesto Kid, at 10:41 AM