I got a tweet from Britain saying that Michael Gove, the minister of education, has approved three new schools for state funding that teach creationism as science.
We know that Gove has been consulting with Joel Klein and the leaders of KIPP and has expressed great interest in charter schools. This seems to be the next step.
It does make you wonder if the world is spinning backwards. When will we see a replay of the Scopes trial?
I was re-reading Albert Shanker’s columns from the late 1990s this morning, and he warned that the greatest danger of the charter school idea was that each would “do its own thing,” have its own curriculum, and even its own version of truth. He was right.
UPDATE: Here is another view of creationism in UK schools: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/18/creationist-free-schools-hysteria?intcmp=239
We must remember that US debates are different from those played out in other nations.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m in danger of being the sceptic about every story you get from England, but there are always layers of politics to this stuff and religion has been a pretty sensitive issue here for a few years (but not in any way like the US culture wars). That story came from the interpretation of the British Humanist Association which at best could be described as an organisation for promoting secularism, and at worst could be described as campaigning against all religious belief.
Anyway, the Guardian published a blog arguing against the substance of it’s own story a few days later which, at the very least, suggests the issues are more nuanced:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/18/creationist-free-schools-hysteria?intcmp=239
From the article referenced above by teachingbattleground:
“There is a confluence of two agendas here. One is the political agenda amongst those who wish to attack Michael Gove and his school reforms. The other is the secularist lobby, who wish to attack Christians in education. Alarmist news of loony creationists running state schools happily accommodates both agendas. It is worrying that this is increasingly taking grip on the public imagination, since it appears so out of kilter with the facts. Not only that, but it bears no relation to the much more important debate about how we stop our nation’s children leaving school without being able to read and write properly, and stop Britain’s seemingly inexorable slide down international educational league tables.”
Diane, is the point is you don’t want creationism to be taught as a science or that you don’t think it should be taught at all? If it is taught, should it be taught in a religion course or is religion taboo in schools?
If a charter school can’t teach what it wants in the manner it wants, then how is it any different than a traditional public school having to follow standards, assessments and an increasingly apparent national curriculum via Common Core standards? If a charter school is fundamentally educationally no different than charter schools, then they are indeed just a way for venture capitalists to make money using taxpayer funds and children.
Who/what should be able to decide what is taught in schools (charter and traditional public) and how? A consortia of states controlled by private interests or local communities and school boards?
You know, Diane, I’ve been thinking about this issue for a while. I don’t know much about how things work in England, but consider the tension between federalism and states’ rights in the US. After reading a collection of Sheldon Wolin’s essays on the US constitution a few years ago and reflecting on a big federal education push (the Common Core State (sic) Standards and a big states’ rights issue (teaching intelligent design – creationism is passe’ isn’t it? – in public or publicly-funded schools), I’m increasingly of the opinion that the bigger threat is allowing the federal government to impose its will on the entire nation (or to bribe states by gaming the rules of how it funds them) when it comes to education.
I realize that this can be terribly problematic, but what we have now is already worse thanks to NCLB and RttT, and the imposition of CCSS and the concomitant tests in two years will only make things more horrid. There is no way I believe that the fallout from CCSS will be an improvement for the nation’s schools or children, but I have no trouble seeing how it will make things much better for corporations and hedge-fund managers and billionaires set on taking over our schools and imposing austerity measures and bankrupt “business models” and business “values” (as if!) on pretty much every student and teacher in the country. The more standardized we make our schools, the more likely we are to get truly ugly cookie-cutter academies from hell.
The alternative, which is to fight federalism in education tooth and nail, seems necessary. The price we pay for fending off federal rule of schools is having to fight curricular fights wherever they arise at the local and state level, but we’ve mostly been able to do that successfully over and over. Taking the particular example of replacing science with religion, I have more confidence that people who believe in the separation clause and the right of every child in public school to receive a scientifically-sound education in science class to win fights in the courts. It seems to happen consistently. Is it expensive? Sure. Is it a pain in the ass? Undoubtedly. But that’s how democracy works. You never can sit back and assume that the victory you just won won’t have to be defended and re-fought in the future.
On the other hand, given the current composition of SCOTUS and the increasing conservative activism there, it’s not inconceivable to me that at some point 5 or more “justices” will figure out a way to hand the fundamentalists who seek to turn biology classes into places for religious indoctrination (and to be clear, I’m all for having conversations in school about religion: in debate classes, in history & government classes, etc., where they belong. I’ve advocated for having English departments offer Literature of the Bible, Koran, and other Sacred Texts courses, or at least units that look at the interplay between literature and the holy books of major world religions. It’s inconceivable to me that someone can do a decent job of studying English or world literature without knowing those texts. Of course, I also favor including “mythology,” meaning the Norse, Teutonic, Greek, Roman, etc., tales that we smugly dismiss as myths because the religions they emerged from are no longer followed. And of course, including similar “myths” from other cultures as they inform literature from other countries. I know that this was once not impossible, as my 9th grade English teacher was able to do so with impunity in 1964-5. But now, it would come under attack from both left and right-wing forces. The left would mistake it for violating separation, and the religious right would scream that THEIR holy books aren’t myths or literature!).
My point here is not that religion should be a forbidden topic in public schools: just that 1) it’s not a substitute for or alternative to science, and has no place at all in science classrooms; and 2) that no class that includes religion can be taught so as to promote any religion over others, or over the choice to be agnostic or atheist or to practice Wicca or Discordianism or follow the Flying Spaghetti Monster. If the conversation is open, broad, non-sectarian, and non-proselytizing, and if it’s kept out of conversations about science (or even math, where some fundamentalist Christians actually offer text-books that reject what they term “modern math” for reasons that I can only attribute to a combination of truly abject ignorance and fanaticism run amok), then there is no excuse for kids to refuse to learn evolution or modern cosmology via astronomy in an earth science class. No one is going to be forced to sign a document of ACCEPTANCE of Darwin, but to get a passing grade in biology, you’d best be able to do a reasonable job of providing answers to questions that begin, “According to the theory of natural selection, . . . ”
I don’t see how we can get away from federal destruction of public education without being willing to fight the incursion of religion into science classes at the local and state levels over and over again. I’m not worried quite so much about other cans of worms that this might open (e.g., segregation and discrimination) because there’s so much case law there, and there’s nothing in what I’m suggesting that stops parties from seeking relief in federal court to prevent the reimposing of “separate but equal,” or worse. But if we expect the federal government to intervene every time a state or districts does something we don’t like regarding curriculum, we are opening the door to just the sort of horror show we’ve been seeing at least since NCLB was passed. That should have been ruled unconstitutional, as should be RttT, CCSS, and nationally-mandated high-stakes tests.
Of course, I may be utterly wrong here. I haven’t shared this publicly anywhere, though I have a blog piece in the queue about it in response to a couple things John Thompson has written in support of CCSS. So I imagine I’ll get a lot of interesting feedback on this, or at least I hope I do.
Michael – The idea of federalism is that the federal government and state governments SHARE powers. I tend the think the way powers are divided in the constitution is largely appropriate. The problem with RTTT and other similar programs is the federal government’s attempt to skirt its constitutional inability to compel states to follow their policies. Indeed – no states HAVE to adopt the common core, but the face the possibility of a lot more money if they do.
Furthermore – there are issues which we would do well to consider as a nation – and act together on – and it might even be good for the federal government to force states to follow (I’m thinking Little Rock 9). My feeling is that rather than discussing our present-day issues (stand-your-ground law, death penalty, affirmative action) in an open manner, most of them are corrupted by monied interests that want to win no matter what – which corrodes our democracy and turns us into fighters rather than talkers.
Regarding schools having their own curriculum (but not their own truth): This has great potential. Local schools, that are beholden to the state for their very general curricular goals, should be able to modify and adapt these curricula to their particular constituencies – i.e. the individual classrooms. There, a teacher should be able to take the established curriculum as a jumping off point and then craft the individual instruction to meet the needs, desires, and abilities of the students. If there are topics or areas that require additional study or that would profit from more enrichment and clarification activities, a teacher would be free to take those tacks. That might also mean that other topics or areas might get shortened or eliminated. But a teacher should be able to make those judgments. Ultimately, in a neighborhood, one might find that the school tends to emphasise some areas over others. This gives that school a certain character, reflective, theoretically, of its neighborhood. It would still follow the general state guidelines, of course, but it would be using, de facto, “its own curriculum.” This, to me, is the ideal to which we should be striving, as opposed to the completely opposite and increasingly popular notion that everyone should be doing the same thing in every classroom in every school in the nation, thereby insuring that national tests will be assessing a true common core curriculum. I say hooray for every school having its own curriculum.
This story just highlights all the different ways special interests can use charter schools to promote those interests. It seems like there are about a million ways charters will create more inequality, more division, and less democracy. We all want to solve our problems privately – less and less are we willing to solve them together.
I believe the common core and the nationalized standards and assessments will do much more damage than any charter school curriculum or blueprint for operation. As charters as structured in my state, they have to teach under the same mandates as public schools so there is no autonomy for them in that regard.
The special interests (private entities such as the NGA, CCSSO, Bill Gates, etc and the DOEd) have hijacked the traditional public school operations to promote their own interests of gathering data that will suit the workforce, not to provide exceptional education. This educational “reform” has little to do with educational goals. I am no fan of charters and in Missouri, they are just one more conduit for this student/family data for the government agencies.
This does indeed create a dumbing down of American children to become compliant worker bees, not individuals leaning how to direct their own lives and make their own decisions for their future. I see this issue as much more dangerous than charter schools. It touches many more children than charters will ever hope to.
The common core and data system will actually create more inequality, more division and less democracy, IMO. Heck, a school board’s authority today consists of hiring teachers, setting tax rates and maintaining physical properties. So much for autonomy! A centralized system cannot hope to address individual learning styles or communities.
It isn’t every day that a Creation Science Hall of Fame is started. But that is exactly what has happened.
A small group of Doctorates and a retired Science Teacher has started the first ever Creation Science Hall of Fame. Currently it’s a web site: creationsciencehalloffame.org, but they have intentions of building a brick and mortar structure somewhere between Answers in Genesis Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter.
Nick Lally, the founder of the CSHF says he expects over one million visitors per year as people shuttle back and forth between the life-size Ark Encounter to the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, USA.
The Hall of Fame building will eventually house the biographies, pictures, accomplishments, effects, and artifacts of all its inductees. Until that time, we shall illustrate those items on the web site.
Just recently, the CSHF dedicated a full page to Dr Jerry Bergman, author of Slaughter of the Dissidents by listing (with permission) his “Select list of Science Academics, Scientists, and Scholars who are Skeptical of Darwinism”.
Mr. Lally understands that this is a monumental project, but he also knows that if God is for it, who could be against it?
He hopes that donations will begin pouring in as soon as the Board of Directors complete and secure the Not-For-Profit application.
Nick says its time has come. The creation movement in this country will now be united more than ever, and proud of the fact that it can show the world the list of inductees who have honored God’s Word as literally written in Genesis and have worked toward that end during their lifetime.
Christians around the world will aspire to the Creation Science Hall of Fame as well as home-schoolers who will gain a wealth of information from the web site.
Nick Lally, Chairman, Board of Directors, Creation Science Hall of Fame