Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Constitutional Creationism

An interesting article on Science Daily. I am most interested in one comment:
"The studies say that more than 25 percent of biology teachers do not know it is unconstitutional to teach creationism."
Apparently 100% of the editors of this article do not know it is not unconstitutional to teach creationism.

The Supreme Court has found it unconstitutional for a state law to require the teaching of creationism.

It is not illegal for a teacher to teach whatever they feel is appropriate to their class (subject to their working agreement with the school administration).

3 comments:

Alan said...

"It is not illegal for a teacher to teach whatever they feel is appropriate to their class (subject to their working agreement with the school administration)."

What a lot of rot! Teachers have a duty to teach the established syllabus as laid down by the department of education not some ridiculous pseudo-science clap trap. They can "feel" what they want but they must teach the FACTS not religious rubbish.

nedbrek said...

Hi Alan! Long time!

Not sure about Australia, but in America the DOEdu has very little influence. It is up to the states to decide what is required. The states usually have pretty vague rules (3 years of math, 2 of history, etc.)

Usually counties decide the books that will be used. Even what parts of the books and the methods are left to teachers.

This allows parents to directly influence what is taught (by interacting with teachers and school boards). Rather than trying to influence some nebulous federal body.

Alan said...

Yeah, hi back at ya, been very busy.
It seems we have a very different system over here. While each state has its own DOE they all ultimately answer to the federal dept and a person can move from school to school, state to state and the books and education will be essentially the same. I guess the teachers have less leeway in that they have a syllabus to teach and can't deviate too far from it. I think it's potentially dangerous to allow small possibly less educated communities to set the syllabus for their educators. We are also not burdened with that creation rubbish.
Alan.