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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Sol System: [QB] I've been surrounded by high levels of conservative Christian right-wing views for the past several days, so here's my chance to let off some steam. Don't hurt me. [IMG]http://flare.solareclipse.net/wink.gif[/IMG] The following is a story from the local paper that literally left me speechless. CONSERVATIVES ELIMINATING EVOLUTION THEORY IN MANY STATES' SCHOOLS by Hanna Rosin For biology teacher Al Frisby, teaching evolution to the many studends who take the Bible literally is like "banging his face against a brick wall." More than a third of his students at his suburban high school in Shawnee Mission, Kan., wrote in a final evaluation last year that they did not believe a single thing their teacher had to say on the subject. The challenge Frisby faces is apt to get tougher next year. On Wednesday, a majority of the Kansas Board of Education may vote to pass a new statewide science curriculum for kindergarten through 12th grade that wipes out virtually all mention of evolution and related concepts: natural selection, common ancestors, and the origins of the universe. The new curriculum will not explicitly prohibit the teaching of evolution. But its exclusion will severely undermine such efforts when they come under attack from students, parents, principals, or local school boards in a state where fights over evolution are as commonplace as cornfields. If the conservative majority on the school board prevails as expected, it will mark the most decisive victory in recent years for the creationist movement: Christians who read the book of Genesis literally and believe that God created human beings and animals fully formed. "This is the most explicit censorship of evolution I have ever seen," said Molleen Matsumara of the National Center for Science Education. In the past two decades, creationists have undergone their own process of evolution. After a series of court decisions from 1968 to 1987 barred the movement's efforts to have biblical creationism taught in the schools, activists changed their strategy. They began to focus instead on attacking evolution as an unproven theory, picking apart such basic building blocks as fossil records and geological dating. National organizations dedicated to "scientific creationism" published books and videos and magazines designed to educate students on how to resist what they described as the "conspiricy" of evolution. The movement's success has been evident in the past five years. In dozens of states, religious conservatives on school boards and legislatures have been chipping away at what scientists consider a bedrock concept of biology: In the last four years, school boards in seven states - Arizona, Alabama, Illinois, New Mexico, Texas, Kansas, and Nebraska - have tried to remove evolution from state science standards or water down the concepts, with varying degrees of success. State legislatures in both Georgia and Ohio have bills pending that require all educators who teach evolution to also teach evidence inconsistent with it. In 1995, Alabama passed a law mandating that all biology books used in public schools bear a sticker describing evolution as a "controversial theory...No one was present when life first appeared. Therefore any statement about life's origins should be considered a theory and not a fact." In 1996, the legislature in Tennessee, home of the famous 1925 Scopes trial over the teaching of evolution, considered (though ultimately rejected) a bill allowing public school teachers to be fired if they taught evolution as "fact" rather than "theory." In 1997, the Texas Board of Education proposed replacing all biology books in the state with new ones that did not mention evolution. The move was considered to signal a national trend because Texas is the second largest purchaser of textbooks after California. The proposal failed by a slim majority. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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