Perhaps you laughed, perhaps you were astonished when you read that Republicans in Ohio in the House voted for a law that would allow a student’s religious beliefs to give the wrong answers on science tests.
Peter Greene shows that the proposed bill is even worse than we thought.
He begins:
It’s called the “Ohio Student Religious Liberties Act of 2019” and it sets out to accomplish a few things:
It removes the limits on exercising expression of student religious beliefs. The old, struck-out language said the board of education could limit said expression to lunch period or other noninstructional time. That’s the piddly stuff.
Under the new language, “religious expression” (the stuff no longer limited to non-instructional time) includes prayer, gatherings (clubs, prayer groups, etc), distribution of written materials, and, well, anything religious, actually, including wearing religious gear or “expression of a religious viewpoint” (as long as it’s not obscene or indecent or vulgar). Cue the Church of the Flying Spagetti Monster and the local Satanic Temple; if a student offers a prayer to Satan in the middle of English class and some Christians in the class find that indecent and vulgar, can it be suppressed? Congratulations to the first batch of lawyers and judges that are going to have to sort this out. Double congratulations to whatever government body ends up being responsible for determining which religions are state-certified to be protected under this law.
Students hall have access to school facilities before, during and after school that school hours to the same extent that secular activities may do so. Place your bets now on how many schools will simply ban all before and after school activities in order to sidestep this.
Forget about separation of church and state. The Good News evangelicals will convene their meetings in the middle of math and science classes.
The Founders were wiser than we when they sought to separate church and state, to be sure that every individual was free to practice their own religion (or lack thereof) in their own way outside of the public school.
Thus continues our nation’s slide into a pit of religious intolerance and invasions of religious liberty, all–ironically– in the name of religious freedom.
The Bible has something to say about this:
“And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted. I said in my heart, ‘I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.’ And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind.”
Ecclesiastes 1:13-17
People who actually search out “wisdom” all know this legislation in Ohio is an example of the madness and folly, this passage in the Bible mentions.
Well said, Lloyd!!!
Remember Halloween 2017 when Betsy Devos dressed up as Ms. Frizzle from the MAGIC SCHOOL BUS.
https://ew.com/news/2017/10/31/betsy-devos-ms-frizzle-halloween-costume/
Which prompted such tweets;
Betsy Devos was just paying tribute to that MAGIC SCHOOLBUS episode where Ms. Frizzle took the kids back 5,000 years to watch Heaven and Earth being created by an “Intelligent Designer” in just seven days … “It’s Day Two, students!”… or the episode where Adam & Eve get chucked out of the Garden of Eden and first confront dinosaurs, with their two sons Cain & Abel racing each other while saddled up on top of two other dinosaurs, but ‘The Friz” and the kids hop back on the bus to return to the present whereupon they find fossils that confirm and prove all of the above.
Peter has done a wonderful job of highlighting some of the absurdities in this bill. Ohio needs to get organized and boot all of the Republicans out of office. I have yet to find one good idea about education or social policies promoted by these elected officials. I would love to see some expert follow the money on this bill.
Test, General Science (Note to teachers: In Ohio, all the answers are correct.)
Beyond the atmosphere, one finds_____.
a. space
b. the waters of heaven, separated by the Firmament from the waters of Earth on the Second Day
Disease is caused by_____.
a. bacteria and viruses
b. demons
The sun is _____.
a. the star around which the Earth orbits
b. a fiery ball in the sky that can be ordered to stop moving
The stars are _____.
a. massive, distant, self-luminous celestial bodies that produce energy by means of nuclear fusion
b. little points of light stuck in a sphere called “the firmament” that will fall to the Earth during the End Times when the Third Angel sounds a horn
The universe originated with_____.
a. the Big Bang, according to the standard cosmological model
b. the Divine Fiat
The Earth was created_____.
a. approximately 4.543 billion years ago
b. in 4004 BC
Insects have_____.
a. Six legs
b. Four legs (Leviticus 11:20-23)
Thought occurs in which human organ?
a. The brain
b. The heart (Sirach 17:6)
A circle’s circumference, divided by its diameter, is the number pi, which is_____.
a. an infinite, irrational number beginning with 3.14.
b. three (1 Kings 7:23-26 and 2 Chronicles 4:2-5
The Earth was formed_____.
a. after the Sun
b. before the Sun (see Genesis creation story)
cx:
b. little points of light that will fall to the Earth during the End Times, when the Third Angel sounds a horn; these are stuck in a solid sphere that covers the Earth, “the firmament”
Note that different answers might be given by students who are followers of the Papuan Pig Goddess.
In Ohio, those answers are also correct.
Who decides what are the correct religious answers? Is there going to be a religious scholar from every belief who will verify all sorts of answers? Maybe every answer will be correct since there is nobody to verify what constitutes a correct religious belief.
I would like to have the followers of the Papuan Pig Goddess answer science problems with their religious beliefs. Up is down and left is right. All is the same. Red is blue and orange is black. Green never counts. That is part of their sacred text.
These notions are so absurd. Are we sure this law didn’t come from Florida? We need to start a religion against standardized tests.
LOL. This does have a Floridian ring to it!
I was a convert to battling the forces of standardized testing darkness a long, long time ago.
“Thought occurs in the heart” which explains the religious KellyAnne Conway’s alternative facts narrative.
If thought occurs in the heart but there is no heart, can there be any thought?
“If thought occurs in the heart but there is no heart, can there be any thought?”
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I think you are referring to Donald Trump who has no heart and can’t think or can’t think because he had no heart or has no heart so he has been brain dead since birth.
Pi has an infinite number of digits but is not an infinite number, so that answer is actually more wrong (infinitely so) than the answer that pi is “3”
Not sure I follow this. Since it has a precise definition, doesn’t it make sense to describe it as an infinite number, even if that number can never be stated?
An infinite number is greater than any number you choose. No matter how large.
Though it has an infinite number of digits, pi has a finite value — eg, between 3 and 4, both of which are also finite
Ah, I see your point. Ofc, SomeDAM. Poor wording on my part. Thank you.
And, SomeDAM, the “infinitely so” is very funny.
Bob,
Brilliant! I don’t mean to brag, but FYI, I got 100% correct.
Bob, I am very disapponted in you: you are proposing a test that is based on the Christian Bible and is ignoring all other religions. Shame on you, Brother!
Lest you think me insufficiently ecumenical, here is my piece on how to change a lightbulb:
https://wordpress.com/post/bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2028
Oops, wrong link: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/11/16/how-to-change-a-lightbulb-an-ecumenical-guide-bob-shepherd/
Uh, gross! Hence I love it!
I am surprised that someone is surprised by this. Whole Language is just the same faith-based teaching, has been used for decades. Nothing new.
Everyone. This is one reason why this blog is so addictive. Brilliant minds at play and with a leader who honors the play. Thanks for the romp.
LAura, thank you for adding to the mind-play.
Betsy Devos has openly insisted that the separation of church & state “needs to be thrown on the ash heap of history.”
Same with Bill Barr.
can’t wait for the traditional churches to start seeing that they are NOT all alike and that with multiple diverse religions well established in the USA this could get really convoluted….
Orwell couldn’t have made up this shit. Ohio has overtaken Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Alabama and Florida in the Race To The Bottom. And to think I escaped Louisiana to land in a more regressive state. Whodda thunk it? Ignore any prognostications I might make in the future.
LOL. The future ain’t what it used to be.
As I just commented on Mr Greene
s blog - get out of
religion` and live your life properly .……………… of
religion
…………..In 2016, 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump. They are STILL supporting him, even after all his lies, and his overt treason. Some of the crazier ones think “god” picked Trump to be president. Smart, they ain’t. Deluded, they are.
The Ohio science test legislation offers up an intriguing opportunity. As a current meme puts, it, If “Christians” think Trump was picked by god, then why not nail him to a cross, wait for three days, and see what happens?
Almost all of the voucher money in Ohio goes to Catholic schools. After Dr. Figlio (study funded by Fordham) found Ohio vouchers resulted in no positive educational outcome. Ohio increased its voucher funding.
Almost 60% of white Catholics voted for Trump. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops posted at its site that they themselves are among the strongest advocates of parental school choice and have been since the initiative’s beginning. State Catholic conferences are pushing repeal of the Blaine amendments.
A study found that in some parishes, the revenue from vouchers exceeds that from worshippers. A Milwaukee Catholic school chain posted, “Faith, prayer and religious instruction are the foundation of classroom learning.” In Milwaukee, the state deducts $36.8 mil. from the public school system for the parental choice program with the overwhelming majority going to Catholic schools.
Jewish faith organizations and a number of protestant faith organizations (Pastors for Texas Children) actively support public schools.
I’m at a loss to explain why so many at this blog evidently believe the political activities of the Catholic hierarchy against public education are so irrelevant that they deserve no mention.
I speculate that the R.I. push for privatization is the combined effort of the hedge-fund loving Gov. Gina Raimondo and the politically powerful Providence bishop who posted this summer that “Catholic schools are a viable alternative to public schools”.
The theocracy of Paul Weyrich calls for parallel schools to destroy public schools.
Personally I feel that Catholic hierarchy supporting “school choice” to get their religious school tuition paid by the public should be called out for it. I expect posters here don’t heed the issue much because in average national stats, Evangelical charters/ vouchers appear to be more of a threat to public schools. However your stats show there’s a wide swath, namely rust-belt urbs, where Catholic schools are eating the pubschs’ lunch. And as you noted in another post, the pol-zealots behind this are making their move now in CA, & are no doubt organizing in other hispanic-majority-minority areas.
Bethree-
You’re right that geographic spread is important, which denominations, where, how many total students, how the religious exert political influence, etc.
A 2019 Bellwether report advised ed reformers to reach out to churches to achieve their goals in the south which suggests it’s an initiative in the beginning stages. A listing that identifies those aligned with billionaire funded privatization- the evangelical hierarchies, organizations, individuals, and their links to related, billionaire-led campaigns, achieves focus for counter efforts.
I’ve listed the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the state Catholic conferences, Catholic League, Napa Institute (Blaine amendments), dioceses in Milwaukee, Providence, Charlotte, etc., Catholic school chains, Seton and Cristo Rey (in about 1/2 the states and expanding), articles supporting vouchers for Catholic schools specifically, written by Fordham and Manhattan Institute (Koch). The individuals I’ve listed include the superintendent of Los Angeles Catholic Schools, who became a Pahara Fellow, Paul Weyrich, deceased founder of the religious right and ALEC, and Leonard Leo, Federalist Society.
Commenters at this blog should expand the evangelical listing which to this point has been limited to Liberty (Blaine amendments).
Related- did the religious right’s co-founder, Jerry Falwell, call for parallel schools?
“Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”
Dean Wormer to Bluto Blutarsky, “Animal House”
…unless you’re a Republican in Ohio evidently.
If you are a Republican in Ohio you take that language and remove the negative: “Being fat, drunk, and stupid is a good way to go through life, son, especially if you get elected to the legislature.”
I do not think, it’s accidental, the same day this bill was proposed, God has decided to flood Venice. We have been warned.
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2019/11/photos-of-venice-underwater-highest-tide-in-50-years/601930/
Haaaa!!!
Being ignorant of thought among the common people throughout the world, I cannot say how it feels about science and its practice. Still, I wonder if the willingness to accept superstition over reason is not to be expected in the changing world we face. If we would back up a bit, and try to see these silly laws as a part of a whole, perhaps we would understand their presence in a day we all hoped would be moving away from folly.
The world is rapidly changing. Reaction to this rapid expansion of scientific understanding naturally breeds a reaction. I suspect there would be people all around the globe whose basic world view would be challenged by some aspect of science and its view of life. Knowing this, some political leaders play to these fear reactions to gain power. This should surprise no one, since political power is a game played by those who want power, regardless of which side of a particular issue they are on. It is a dangerous game. Historian JB Bury suggested that “a theologian on the throne is a public danger.”
Add all this to the presence of science that makes mistakes by the ton, and you have a public that is not immune to quackery. Between the charlatans who want to profit politically and the ones who want to clear a profit, there is plenty of room to take advantage of the times.
Religious people were put off by the thought that the earth revolved around the sun. It went against religious teachings. We haven’t progressed very far. Pretty soon, it might be legislated that all schools must teach geocentrism. Data accumulated by scientists isn’t believed today either.
…………..
When did the church accept that the Earth moves around the sun?
…As Protestantism and Catholicism battled it out for religious supremacy, whichever religion gave ground on the geocentric model of the universe was accused by the other of turning away from the scriptures. As a result, both stood firm on an immobile Earth.
In schools, things made a bit more progress. For much of the 1700s, people insisted that both models should be taught to students. (Sound familiar?) Once both models were being taught, with both professional and amateur astronomers proliferating, the geocentric model continuously lost ground. It simply didn’t support the growing body of data that scientists were accumulating. As astronomers stopped believing in geocentrism, schools stopped teaching it, and it was good and dead, academically, by the 1800s…
https://io9.gizmodo.com/when-did-the-church-accept-that-the-earth-moves-around-1295437000%3Futm_medium=sharefromsite%26utm_source=_email&utm_campaign=top
1992 only: “After 350 Years, Vatican Says Galileo Was Right: It Moves”
Apparently Ohio legislators didn’t get even this memo.
Thanks Mate for the post.
Theocracy, inseparable from oligarchy, robs Americans of their freedom.
A co-founder of the religious right also founded the Koch’s ALEC and Heritage Foundation.
The co-founders, were Jerry Falwell, evangelical, and Paul Weyrich, Catholic.
A law declaring that facts are not facts is in keeping with the Trump philosophy of alternative facts.
Make up your own history.
Nailed it
RT [are you Roy Turrentine?], I think your point is well-taken that when the world changes too swiftly, there is inevitably public backlash, digging in of heels, and even the attempt to re-establish backwards & obsolete ideology. I am not sure what we see currently is about scientific advance per se, but it is certainly a consequence of the ongoing ripple-effect from the now decades-old digital revolution [technological change]. Economic disruption is the most likely culprit for the widespread insecurity/ fear that triggers reversion to earlier cultural models. In the US, the shift to global economy is behind decades of trickle-up voodoo economics & the consequential hollowing out of labor unions & middle/working class economic security. And that shift has everything to do with the digital revolution.
Yes, I am Roy Turrentine. I got tired of typing the whole thing. Thanks for the comments.
Because the benefits of the digital “revolution” has been hijacked by the billionaires. The digital revolution (and all technical advance) is supposed to enable people to do less work and have more free time. Then people woukldn’t feel threatened by these scientific advances but would greet them with delight.
I think it’s time for people to demand a 6 hour work day and 2 months paid yearly vacation time. This is the minimum the technical advances of the last 50 years allow.
The state of Tennessee outlawed the teaching of evolution in public schools. The law was not repealed until 1967. See
https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/bioscience/butler-act-the-law-that-outlawed-evolution/
States are free to outlaw facts.
Any legislator who votes to outlaw facts or modern science is very stupid and wants to make others stupid.
“States are free to outlaw facts.”
Freedoms can be used stupidly—if that’s your point. In any case, just because stupidity is allowed doesn’t mean, schools are allowed to tolerate stupidity.
If the only problematic lessons children received in religious schools were erroneous historical facts, America would be lucky. But, the major U.S. religions teach that women don’t belong in top leadership roles. And, some teach that women should be “sweet” and obey men. And, some teach the contrived notion of original sin with confession to clergy as the only way to be free of it. It’s an effective control technique which explains the alliance of theocracy and oligarchy.
The 1,000,000 Irish who died of starvation had authoritarian religion and government, and they had clergy who discouraged them from uprisings.
I read an article written by an American man with 9 siblings who was raised in a religious home in Kansas. He described that as a child he had no “sin” to confess but, the demand to confess was so compelling he made something up. He further explained that his family was excruciatingly poor because there were 12 of them. The parents adhered to the religious teachings about birth control.
Why is it so easy to forget recent history -that the conditions of religious authority led to widespread child abuse and coverup?
Again, if the only damage done was inaccurate stories about evolution…
Linda, you are throwing spaghetti at the wall. So many different issues there, which one will stick?
Yes, ALL major religions in the US (and globally) lag behind the cultural mores of the time & are very slow to change. Hence one can observe in any church, synagogue, mosque or Hindu temple—all deriving from patriarchal societies—that men are in the catbird seat.
Mainstream Protestantism and Reform Judaism are the furthest ahead in this regard, in terms of numbers of women leading congregations, although we see some of this among Evangelical Protestants. That Catholics are so behind this curve no doubt is part of why folks leave that organizaton faster than the others listed.
Harping on the Church’s collaboration in the Irish potato famine is getting old: that was 175 yrs ago!
The RC sacrament of confession is not an “an effective control technique which explains the alliance of theocracy and oligarchy,” how ridiculous. I’ll wager most self-described “observant” US Catholics get to confession once annually, just before Easter.
Global oligarchies perpetuate themselves by any number of means—religion if it’s handy/ fits—but mostly, private ownership of the economy, buttressed in some cases by armies & secret police, plus long history of rich-poor dichotomy.
“but mostly, private ownership of the economy, buttressed in some cases by armies & secret police, plus long history of rich-poor dichotomy.”
And Linda suggests, the 1% uses ideology to keep their power. She suggests, in many countries this ideology is some form of religion.
Military or police force are outdated means to gain and keep power, ideology is not.
We know DeVos’s deep religious convictions, and while Koch’s obsession is libertarianism, he has no problem with teaming up with the far right. Liberttarianism is not good at controlling the minds of the masses, while organized religion has perfected the art for thousands of years.
I think, it is impossible to understand Trum’s election and poluarity without examining why the taf right has gained such prominence.
Máté Wierdl: I learned a few days ago that Evo Morales paid buses full of Columbian men to come to Bolivia and strip the churches and other places of anything of wealth. My friend sent me a photo of the money that was on one of these planes that was taking all of this enrichment out of the country to Morales who is connected with drug cartels.
Morales is a native who never had any schooling. He can’t read but he had three terms as the elected leader of Bolivia.
I was told that one time he wanted to go to Santa Cruz. The residents heard about this and they drove their cars to the landing area of the airport. His plane couldn’t land.
Mate.
You provide a succinct analysis that should be widely communicated.
Carol-
The cars lined up at the airport was a courageous and original idea that required the 99% to come together.
The question in this country is if, in similar circumstances, religious leaders would park their cars at the airport?
The US Conference of Bishops, the staff of the state Catholic conferences, Liberty University, mega-churches, Independent Baptists conference?
American religious leaders could be forgiven for not joining the 99% in political activity if they refrained from being political in joining with billionaires to destroy the common good-public schools.
Military and secret police may be outdated means to keep power in modern Western society, but hardly around the globe. Oligarchies use religion [or – and I like your point– ideology generally ] for persuasion where it’s handy/ fits. But it’s generally a weak hold, hence military/ secret police. Under any paradigm, the strongest hold on power by private sector is control of the economy. That can only be accomplished with govt participation [which becomes collusion then corruption]—accomplished here by free-marketeers clawing back legislative ground lost in Depression, thanks to weak govt response to automation/ globalization. Public has been buffaloed in our case by the kabuki ideology show: capitalism vs socialism [/communism]. Religion brought in if/ when it helps. The swing to far-right was managed mainly by the neoliberal power-grab response to weakening of labor force/ unions/ middle-wkg classes brought on by automation/ globalization. Left us with no left.
Some might make a simpler case for 2016- the richest 0.1%’s control of the economy was achieved by the religious steering their followers to vote Republican.
If the religious had stayed home, Hillary would have been elected.
That would ignore Trump’s platform, which was bringing jobs back to middle/wkg classes via changing trade & immigration policies. Prettty sure that spoke loudest to his voters. Including many wkg-class RC’s in the rust belt. Nevertheless, for others the biggie was getting conservatives on SCOTUS – & for many of them, abortion on the brain. I don’t think we can separate issues clearly here: given the close vote, nearly any “what if” would push it the other way.