Wait. Texas Is Spending How Much Money to Violate the Constitution?

[marmar]

from Slate:


Wait. Texas Is Spending How Much Money to Violate the Constitution?
By Phil Plait


As usual, when I write about this topic, let me start off by being very clear: Young Earth creationism—the idea that God created the Earth 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, borne of a literal interpretation of the Bible—is wrong. It is provably wrong, and in fact it is a violation of the United States Constitution’s First Amendment to teach it in public school.

So why is Texas (and with new schools opening, also Arkansas and Indiana) spending a whopping $82 million of taxpayers’ money every year to teach it?

This revelation comes from Zack Kopplin, who wrote a devastating article here in Slate about his investigation of Responsive Education Solutions, a group of publicly supported charter schools that currently has more than 65 campuses with 17,000 students enrolled. Kopplin obtained a copy of Responsive Ed’s workbook for biology that is used throughout their charter system, and what’s inside is disturbing, to say the very least.

The workbook, called a “Knowledge Unit”, is loaded with creationist propaganda, both subtle and overt. A large fraction of the curriculum in it is devoted to creating doubt about evolution (and other scientific fields) and to promoting a completely false controversy about the scientific facts of biological evolution. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/01/21/texas_charter_schools_curriculum_teaches_creationism.html

[xchrom]

1. du rec.

[longship]

2. Phil Plait is awesome!

He's the Bad Astronomer!

He has charisma = 18.

His blog is pretty damned wonderful.
Bad Astronomy

I visit it every morning for good sciencey news.