-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
That’s the kind of science nonsense that Louisiana’s taxpayers are going to be funding this upcoming school year. Governor Bobby Jindal’s bill will divert public school funds to pay for vouchers for students to attend private Christian schools like Eternity Christian Academy, in Westlake, LA.
The Eternity Christian Academy follows the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) curriculum. What comprises the ACE science curriculum?
ACE’s science material claims scientists have speculated that Noah took baby dinosaurs on the Ark and that some may still be alive today:
Have you heard of the ‘Loch Ness Monster’ in Scotland? ‘Nessie,’ for short, has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur.
Creationists, using an imaginary being to disprove evolution.
The big losers in Jindal’s diversion of taxes to these establishments of religion, are the kids who go to these Christian Madrasahs. None of their high school level science courses will be accepted by any reputable university. Any university curriculum that requires even a general knowledge of science will not be open to them.
As more and more states slash funding for public education and divert those funds to the Christian Madrasahs, the pool of students exposed to actual science will shrink. Industries that rely on scientific expertise, such as medicine, pharmacology, oil and gas exploration, and defense, will have to look outside the United States to fill their requirements for qualified job applicants.
While ExxonMobil funds ALEC to get states to approve weak fraking legislation, ALEC is also the driving force behind Jindal’s voucher program. With Jindal’s taxpayer subsidy, more of the Religious Right will be able to afford to yank their kids out of the public education system, and many corporations, that fiscal conservatives love, will find the number of scientifically literate job seekers diminish. The marriage of religious conservatives and fiscal conservatives has always seemed like an alliance with opposing agendas on critical issues.
There may be some parents who use their vouchers to send their children to a secular private school that provides a better education than found in the local public school. However, the net effect of vouchers is to divert funding from schools that teach secular science to schools that teach creationism. Wealthy parents can already afford to send their children to private schools so the voucher is an outright taxpayer funded gift for them.
H/T: Bruce Wilson, Michael LaBossiere, The Independent Weekly, Leaving Fundamentalism, John Nichols, Julianne Hing, Kristin Rawls.
I fully endorse the theory of evolution, except for what I believe to be its greatest and most obvious flaw. We are not descendants of the Ape, the Apes are descendants of Homo Sapiens. Apean Beings social mores are much more civil and ethical.
wgward,
You want to privatize the entire system? omg. Of course the rich folks will send their kids to the best schools and the poor folks will send their kids to the schools that cut all sorts of corners in their quest for a better bottom line, that is, if the poor can afford the private school. By making the $$$$ the motivating factor for the entire state education system, you would be making my reasons above come about all the more quickly. An entire state full of ignorant workers. Corporate orgasms at just the thought of it.
Just to give you a good taste in your mouth.
A year or so ago, Hugo Chavez was in Louisiana or somewhere in the regressive South to look at charter schools and voucher systems.
Whom he was planning on suppressing was not clear to me, ie which part of the population of Venezuala.
after looking closely at the picture i did find the kitteh.
Public school teachers in Louisiana should resign en masse and force the State to “go” private schools for all children there: would make the whole “voucher” scam irrelevant.
Tony C smacked that nail right on its proverbial head. Well thought and said.
Tony C.
1, June 24, 2012 at 10:00 am
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yes yes yes 1000 yesses…..
vouchers are devisive in a most undermining, weakening, and basic fashion…..
Malisha
1, June 24, 2012 at 10:49 am
Tony C, 100% agreement here. EVERYBODY needs to pay for a public school just as EVERYBODY needs to pay for a police officer.
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me too.
And add, no school, charter, or home school, or private school should fall outside of the purview of standards of the law. Either we live in a society or we are subjects only to market forces as they are dictated by those who control the markets. It’s pretty clear we haven’t had a free market for evah and the siphon of government has been perverted from the needs of the many to the wants of a few.
Standards laws and Federal laws either is or they isn’t….and the church is not the government and the current government is …..well, WTF is it anyway??????????
Tony, well said.
Some advantages for the vouchers:
Long term –
There are too few, excepting undocumented immigrants, willing to do the dirty work. We need more home grown people who are incapable of doing much of anything else. Lack of education will help fill that worker pool.
A dumbed down populace is easier to manage.
Short term –
There is political hay to be made, as in votes to be garnered, by providing religious fundis with vouchers/cash.
And there’s a lot of money to made by privatization.
Sadly, I believe these reasons to be true.
Bobby Jindal. You have to say it a certain way. With a southern accent but a hint of Hindu in it. One has to hear this in Louisiana when he is in full stride. Vouchers for private schools has been in full swing and promoted by RepubliCons in the north and south since the Southern Strategy was articulated by Lee Atwater and thence promoted by Nixon, then Reagun and thence all of the succeeding RepubliCon leadership. Keep your kids away from the blackfolk is the message.
Tony C, 100% agreement here. EVERYBODY needs to pay for a public school just as EVERYBODY needs to pay for a police officer.
I don’t like the idea of vouchers at all; but it isn’t because they are going to Christian schools. I believe in freedom of religion; and I suppose I have to swallow my bile and say that includes the right of parents to teach utter bullshit to their kids. I think that is a type of freedom that should not be constrained.
I was raised to question all authority (including my parents) and decide for myself. I would not want my father to have been constrained in his right to raise me that way.
I am opposed to vouchers because I think taxes for public education is a public good, it does not make a difference if the people being taxed have children or not, everybody benefits from a better educated populace. The point of public education is to prevent children from being deprived of an education due to an inability to pay, at a time in their brain and body development that cannot be repeated or recovered.
The taxes paid for public school are not individualized, even people without children are required to pay them. There is a PUBLIC benefit, an educated populace earns more, is more productive, and has more choices than an uneducated populace. Education is a multiplier for everything.
A voucher relieves a citizen from paying for his fair share of that public benefit. It creates free riders on the benefit of public schooling. By the logic used to support vouchers, all taxes for public schooling should be based on a head count of the number of children in the household attending public school.
That would entirely destroy the investment in public schooling, because the entire point is that we would lose most of the potential contribution of some children if their parents cannot afford to educate them! That is precisely what would happen if the logic of vouchers is carried forward, families that could not afford to educate their children would exercise the right of “home schooling” in order to avoid school taxes, and raise an army of manual laborers.
Public schooling is a public investment, the productive environment we live in is a result of the investments of a previous generation, a small portion of the benefit of their investments is paid forward to sustain that environment for the next generation. That is the logical justification for charging childless households and child-full households the same rate: Their benefit from the previous generations is evened out by the general economy, and what they are paying forward is the inflation-adjusted capital invested back then.
Vouchers work against that system and reduce the investment, the people that use them are riding free on the investments of the past and should be prohibited from doing that. If their personal convictions demand they raise their children in gullible ignorance, so be it, that should not relieve them of their share of the debt for the society they live in.
Malisha,
Details….details. Heh!
Sad, but not all Christian/Catholic schools are like this. Some do put evolution at the top of the menu. They are careful to preface the teaching that it does infact conflict with the teaching of the Creation doctrine, but lay out the evidence for you either way.
OS: Six days of creation.
On the seventh day he rested.
The picture of the Loch Ness Monster used in the story is a well known hoax. I707 is right. It is a fake neck sticking out of the water, and IIRC, it was only a couple of feet long.
Where most religious fundies miss the boat completely is when they use the Bible as a literal history and science textbook, ignoring the fact it was written two or three thousand years ago by nomadic sheepherders. The other thing they seem to ignore is the moral teachings, which is the purpose of the Bible anyway. If they took the parable of The Good Samaritan as seriously as they take the seven days of creation, we would be a lot better off.
DonS, while we’re “getting used to it” we need to prepare for getting stoned if we are found in contempt. Oh, and when we’re found in contempt — dispense with notice; it’s more patriotic that way.
Our Judge-worship is just a step on the pyramid leading to/from god.
We need to get used to it. The US is becoming infused at all levels and infrastructure by belief in and/or acquiescence to this fundamentalist clap trap. Without politicians willing to stand up and make the distinction between religious belief and the needs of a secular society in the secular sphere, the creeping proselytizers will gain influence.
Another nail in the democratic coffin brought to you by our craven politicians and political system. If it ain’t the MIC/exceptionalists, the safety net demolishers, and the financial ghouls, it’s the fundie Taliban.
There is a site dedicated to
(The Plesiosaur Site)
Good work. Important.
Waves, unlike mountains and clouds, are constrained in size. The pictured Nessie is only 2-4 feet in size. Guesstimating.