I previously named Zack Kopplin to the honor roll for his outspoken opposition to schools teaching creationism. A native of Louisiana, Zack criticized Governor Bobby Jindal’s voucher plan for using public funds to send students to schools that teach creationism.
Zack, a student at Rice University, recently appeared on the Bill Moyers show to talk about vouchers and creationism.
The show featured an interactive map that pinpoints every school teaching creationism with public funding. Most are concentrated in Florida and Louisiana.
If Governor Haslam in Tennessee gets his way (abetted by State Commissioner Kevin Huffman [ex-TFA]), there will be many more creationist schools funded by taxpayers. Even more taxpayer dollars will flow to such schools in Alabama and Georgia, and don’t discount their spread into Indiana, Ohio, and other states.
Is this the STEM education that will propel our nation into the 21st century?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Looks to me like Indiana has a lot more than Louisiana.
Louisiana is just warmed up with vouchers. Religious schools here have been doing this forever. The voucher program is widening.
warming up
Creationism is just the tip of the iceberg of the Grade A Crazy that’s coming from vouchers.
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/07/photos-evangelical-curricula-louisiana-tax-dollars
Number 11 would have really helped out the New York State math regents. Everything would be absolute values- how hard is that?
When will we be adding alchemy to the STEM curriculum?
Alan, I won’t rest until they add Flying Spaghetti Monster! http://www.venganza.org/
May his noodly appendage touch you!
Always a tough topic for me personally. I know both sides very well. I attended and graduated from Bob Jones University which supplies many of those schools with their curriculum.
I understand the frustration on both sides.
After teaching science in public schools for 15 years (including biology, chemistry, A.P. Physics, anatomy/physiology, and physical science), having never stepped foot in a public school before teaching in a rough Title I school right down the road from Bob Jones University (I was educated in private school K-12 in one of those creationist Christian schools), I value public education where students can enter and not be harassed about their religious views. I don’t believe the Bible ought to be taught in public schools.
I also do not believe vouchers are right – they serve no purpose other than to displace middle and upper class kids to privately run schools so they can be indoctrinated (like I was). Our middle and upper class kids perform quite proficiently in our public schools and there is no reform necessary in suburbia. If we are to reform public schools we ought to do it by offering more support to our urban and rural areas by providing health care, more robust wrap-around services, and by lightening the load of the teachers there by reducing class sizes and offering higher wages.
I am on the brink of paying a private Christian school handsomely to educate my children using my wages as a public school teacher. It will be a struggle (2nd and 3rd jobs maybe?), and vouchers would really help, but I do not believe vouchers to be the answer for our most at-risk, poverty stricken kids. Vouchers are a money grab – which makes it funny to see those conservatives yell and scream about handouts, yet they will take government assistance in a heartbeat in the form of a voucher to send their kids to a school they want rather than paying out of pocket.
Like I said, this is a rough topic for me. If anyone regularly follows my posts on this blog, they know my assertions – that Creationism is NOT science, and neither is evolution. For that matter neither is VAM. All three attempt to tell stories about past events of which are not observable, repeatable, or testable but are simply prone to storytelling.
After teaching evolution for many years (very happily by the way), my position remains – I think Creationism should not be in our public schools, yet I also believe we need to think more critically about whether evolution is really science or some form of softer science even entering the territory of pseudoscience.
Let the mud slinging begin…
And also know this, I may enter into knock-down drag-out fights with people about evolution, but you should have seen me when I attended Bob Jones University and challenged top authors of scientific creationism, including Dr. Joe Henson (and others), by questioning the veracity of the science behind Creationism.
Let’s just put it this way, they barely gave me a diploma after I told them that Creationism was not science.
It seems like nobody, neither side, likes me much.
Diploma (or degree) – I attended private school in K-12 where I had lots of questions and Bob Jones University.
Find Creationism lacking in the science…you are not alone.
“I also don’t think that there is really a theory of intelligent design at the present time to propose as a comparable alternative to the Darwinian theory, which is, whatever errors it might contain, a fully worked out scheme. There is no intelligent design theory that’s comparable. Working out a positive theory is the job of the scientific people that we have affiliated with the movement. Some of them are quite convinced that it’s doable, but that’s for them to prove… No product is ready for competition in the educational world.”
Phillip Johnson in the Berkeley Science Review, Spring 2006
Johnson is considered the “father of Intelligent Design”
Does your belief that evolution is not a scientific theory affect the way you teach evolution? Do you tell your students that evolution is a pseudoscience, and that it simply is an attempt to “tell stories”?
I recommend re-thinking your position that evolution and creationISM are equally non-scientific. Evolution was a hypothesis, based on generalizations derived from observations of the natural world. It has been tested and found so reliable as a predictive model that it is now called a theory. That is science.
You and I believe God created the world because we have an inner confirmation that we cannot prove or even explain to those who don’t share that belief. That is not science.
How is evolution not science? I’m looking forward to this…
This reminds me — could somebody please confirm that you can’t get state teaching certification in New York based on a degree from Bob Jones University? It would make me feel a little better.
On the Bob Jones University webpage for Science Education, it says, “Infuse Your Teaching with Biblical Truths.” http://www.bju.edu/academics/majors/science-education/#CompositeScience
They list High School Science Teacher as the top job for grads with this major. I could find nothing indicating the university is regionally accredited, which is usually required for teacher certification in most states, so I’m not sure how ME qualified for certification as a public school science teacher???