Louisiana Creates: New Pro-Intelligent Design Rules for Teachers
Posted on: January 22, 2009 - 11:28am
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Louisiana Creates: New Pro-Intelligent Design Rules for Teachers
Louisiana Creates: New Pro-Intelligent Design Rules for Teachers
Last year, Louisiana passed the Louisiana Science Education Act, a law that many scientists and educators said was a thinly veiled attempt to allow creationism and its variants into the science classroom. On Tuesday, the state's Board of Elementary and Secondary Education adopted a policy that sharpens those fears, giving teachers license to use materials outside of the regular curriculum to teach "controversial" scientific theories including evolution, origins of life, and global warming. Backers of the law, including the Louisiana Family Forum, say it is intended to foster critical thinking in students. Opponents insist its only purpose is to provide a loophole for creationists to attack the teaching of evolution."We fully expect to see the Discovery Institute's book, Explore Evolution, popping up in school districts across the state*," says Barbara Forrest, a philosopher at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond. The Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank, is a proponent of Intelligent Design. In a statement on the institute's Web site, its education analyst Casey Luskin hailed the new policy as a "victory for Louisiana students and teachers." The policy will now be printed in the Louisiana Handbook for School Administrators, which public school officials use as a guide.State education officials tasked with translating last year's law into policy drafted a document that explicitly prohibits teachers from teaching intelligent design, but on 2 December, board members deferred a scheduled vote. Forrest says the advocates of the law used the delay to pressure education officials to remove that language and a disclaimer saying that religion should not be taught under the guise of critical thinking. On 13 January, the 11-member board unanimously approved a policy that contains no such caveats.Education officials have defended the revision, arguing that it already includes language barring the use of materials that promote any religious doctrine. But Patsye Peebles, a retired science teacher who served on a committee that helped the education department draft the original policy language, thinks otherwise. "The creationists got what they wanted. We will have to redouble our efforts to educate our teachers and get them to teach good science," Peebles says. —Yudhijit Bhattacharjee(*This item has been corrected. The original item quoted Forrest incorrectly.)Go here for the Discovery Institute's take.
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Article can be found here:
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/01/louisiana-creat.html
From Scopes to PA a couple years ago, to now this? How much precedence in Judicial history do we have to pile on these morons to get the message accross, THE CONSTITION PROTECTS YOUR FREEDOM OF RELIGION, it does not allow you, even a subversive backdoor manor, it does not give you the right to hijack a public institution in order for government to favor your religion over all others.
If you want to pray to your god, you have your church down the street. If your kid wants to pray to their god in school, they simply cannot hold others hostage or by vertue of majority out others as not belonging to the same religious club.
We are not foold by the lack of mention of Jesus or Bible as to what your intent is. You want to lay the groundwork by chipping away at the separation of church and state "Jefferson's wall", by inventing code words like ID to mask your theocratic attempts at government favortism.
ID is merely Creationism rehashed and that has been bitch slapped time after time. Scientific method is not, on the other hand, related to a religious position, it is a tool that ALL kids of all faiths or no faith sit side by side in a classroom and learn.
Even believers who value scientific method who are not psuedo scientists see the danger of incerting this crap in public schools. It will not help educate kids. It is merely an attempt at political correctness.
If these supporters of ID were truely being "equal" you would see a varient of proponents saying, "Not only will we teach CHRISTIAN ID" BUT we will also teach "MUSLIM ID" or "Scientology ID".
Christains are merely crying foul that people other than Jesus believers are waking up to the fact that our institutions are OURS and not merely where Christians pat us on the head and demand that we sit at the back of the bus.
We are calling them on their theocratic goggles and are not fooled by their attempts to keep the "Non-Christians need not partisipate in our Constitution, just shut up and know your place".
And they are fools to attempt such because all they have to do to see how dangerous these tactics are, even to their own beliefs is to look at theocracies in the middle east where government run schools mandate compusary recitation of the Koran.
I am sorry to report to them that we are not a theocracy and our public classrooms are not yours alone. You have your churches and individual reflections, but you have no monoply on our institutions.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
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Brian your comment would be great on their comments section, reading the article I noted the final comment in need of response:
It just pisses me off that people lay down distorted facts and their biased opinions and ask people to make their own decision. It wonder what grade a student would get if they told him he was a liar?
I am an Ex-Christian.