Creationism again stalks the classroom (LA Times)
Creationism again stalks the classroom
By Michael Hiltzik
January 21, 2014
In a sane world, the ringing denunciation of intelligent design and creationist "science" delivered by a federal judge in 2005 would have eradicated these concepts from the schoolroom.
District Judge John E. Jones III of Harrisburg, Pa., ruled then that "intelligent design" is not science, "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents," and therefore is unconstitutional as a subject to be taught in a public school.
Yet the creationists keep at it. A recent report, written for Slate.com by the indefatigable and implausibly youthful Zack Kopplin, involves a network of charter schools with an enrollment of 17,000 students in Texas, Arkansas, and Indiana and an incredible haul of $82.6 million a year in state, local and federal funds.
As Kopplin reports, the biology workbook assigned to students in the schools operated by Responsive Education Solutions is shot through with creationist propaganda. Among its assertions: "Evolution which is, after all, an unproved theory has been treated as fact. It has reached the level of dogma, widely accepted, but unproven and changing school of thought that is treated as though it were fact."
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-creationism-20140121,0,7617205.story#axzz2rApt05HG