TX Charter Schools (Public funded) teaching creationism

[Bows and Arrows]

slate article

For those unfamiliar with public school in America.
We have the typical neighborhood public schools and in some areas we have charter schools. They are public (free of charge), paid thru state tax dollars. They can specialize on content and are run like a private school. The curriculum just has to meet the minimum standard for the state but they can add anything else. Some are college prep programs, some are arts oriented, some are science & tech, etc.

Typically parents have to provide transportation and meals…(which is a sneaky way of keeping out kids from lower socio-economic homes). But that's another issue.

They typically have to cap their enrollment to prevent over crowding. Popular schools are filled on a lottery.

So, its public school directed like a private. Now these charters in TX are using public funds to basically run a religious themed school and they are popular.

How would you feel about your tax dollars going to teach creationism in a public school?

[The Germans are coming]

That wouldnt even exist here. Schools are forced to use the curriculum that is provided by the governments educational fascilities.

Even catholic churches have to teach sex education or else they are shut down by the stae.

We even outlaw homeschooling, a parent who refuses to send his or her child to school can get up to 10 years in jail.

There are only differences in quality, such as some private schools in which the maths, physics, biology or chemistry lessons are held in a different foreign language each year.

[Tartarus Sauce]

(16-01-2014 09:20 AM)Bows and Arrows Wrote:  slate article

For those unfamiliar with public school in America.
We have the typical neighborhood public schools and in some areas we have charter schools. They are public (free of charge), paid thru state tax dollars. They can specialize on content and are run like a private school. The curriculum just has to meet the minimum standard for the state but they can add anything else. Some are college prep programs, some are arts oriented, some are science & tech, etc.

Typically parents have to provide transportation and meals…(which is a sneaky way of keeping out kids from lower socio-economic homes). But that's another issue.

They typically have to cap their enrollment to prevent over crowding. Popular schools are filled on a lottery.

So, its public school directed like a private. Now these charters in TX are using public funds to basically run a religious themed school and they are popular.

How would you feel about your tax dollars going to teach creationism in a public school?

Texas can go suck a big, fat chode (no offense EA).

[TheBear]

It's amazing, isn't it? I mean, here we are living in the 21st century, with all the scientific and medical advances which would make us look like gods to people living mere centuries ago, and we're still chained to stone age thinking. Indoctrination from childhood is a powerful thing to behold.

[Smercury44]

Read this article today... I lost count of the face palms, and the amount of times I almost barfed everywhere

[Bows and Arrows]

For those that are too lazy to follow links, here is the first few paragraphs of the article

Quote:When public-school students enrolled in Texas’ largest charter program open their biology workbooks, they will read that the fossil record is “sketchy.” That evolution is “dogma” and an “unproved theory” with no experimental basis. They will be told that leading scientists dispute the mechanisms of evolution and the age of the Earth. These are all lies.

The more than 17,000 students in the Responsive Education Solutions charter system will learn in their history classes that some residents of the Philippines were “pagans in various levels of civilization.” They’ll read in a history textbook that feminism forced women to turn to the government as a “surrogate husband.”

Responsive Ed has a secular veneer and is funded by public money, but it has been connected from its inception to the creationist movement and to far-right fundamentalists who seek to undermine the separation of church and state.

[RobbyPants]

It's be nice to see a judge order their funding cut. We'll see how dogmatic they are when the money stops coming in.

[Smercury44]

(16-01-2014 08:26 PM)RobbyPants Wrote:  It's be nice to see a judge order their funding cut. We'll see how dogmatic they are when the money stops coming in.

Yeah, that just flat out needs to happen. The stuff going on in those schools is disgusting, and only harms our society as a whole

[WindyCityJazz]

This is what happens when we allow politicians with no experience in education to run the educational system. They turn around and make it into the system that they want it to be to serve their own ends.

I actually wonder how many Republicans really believe in religion, and how many realize that it's a very powerful tool to keep the masses ignorant. I just find it hard to believe that the top 1% who are trying to put the rest of the country in poverty by eliminating critical thinking in schools also just happen to be so pro-religion. The era of history where the church ruled every aspect with an iron fist is known as "the dark ages" for a reason. The top 1% in the U.S. are taking inspiration from the church. Religion knows that it's two most powerful tools in controlling people are fear and ignorance, and the aristocracy in the U.S. is well aware of it.

[Diogenes of Mayberry]

Crazy, isn't it? It's the 21st century, and yet we have educated adults whose brains are neatly wrapped up in iron age thinking . . . and wanting to inflict this nonsense on kids.