What a fucking idiot.

Yes, let local school boards make decisions about schools—right up till they violate the constitution and start teaching religion.  Children deserve their First Amendment rights to be protected from government enforced religion—the country deserves citizens with decent educations—a functional democracy demands it.

The best science—the ONLY science—is evolution.

Fuck.  Even Popes have been behind that.

Oh, and Bobby “Exorcist” Jindal—claiming you’re a Christian *and* you performed an exorcism makes the fundies Jeebus cry.  You’re a Papist, and a bad one at that.

I just want to punch him right in the nose.

GAH!  Dont’ get me started.  I just got through attending a public high school graduation in Winston Salem, NC, which took place IN A CHURCH!  A Giant megachurch with projection screens, etc.  Apparently no other structure in the city exists to hold 2000 people, other than this church.  In the 30 minutes prior to the graduation starting, very loud Christian contemporary music was played while people waited for the ceremony.  Choice lyrics?  “Marriage is between one man and one woman, and God has ordained it.”  At the end of the graduation, there was a Benediction which served as a prayer on behalf of all in attendance to their collective lord and savior, jesus christ.  I’m getting my letter ready to send to the school, the school district, and the local newspapers. 

These people terrify me.  How are people stupid enough to belief this crap?

I think the main reason I don’t want Jindal to be VP is that every day would be like a flashback to the podunk swamp town I grew up in, and the Catholic high school I was forced to attend there.

Why bother to try to get out if the crazy just follows you?

And this jerk’s a serious idea for Vice-President of the USA?  Sweet Zombie Jesus on Toast ...

And as pointed out upthread, even the Holy See accepts the truth behind evolution.  Hell, if an institution as ossified as the Roman Church is settled on the matter, what’s his problem?  And the text of the Kitzmiller decision should be required reading for every state or local legislator who thinks that superstition should override science.

I’ll bet he believes astrology should be taught in schools as well.

I at least thought he had some shred of honesty in his craziness. But that “teach everything” line is so deliberately deceptive it might have come right from McCain.

Meanwhile Jindal’s daughter goes to school here:

http://www.uhigh.lsu.edu/

Where she no doubt learns about evolution.

The basic formula for conservatives is

1) a first rate education for the ruling class
2) superstition and mumbo jumbo for the peasants

Makes ‘em easier to control, right? Raise them on creationism and they’ll swallow trickle down economics when they’re grown.

To perfectly honest, unless you have course materials or a statement from LSU Lab High*, I wouldn’t assume they do evolution there.  this is Louisiana, remember.  AFAIK evolution is not a required unit in High school biology in Louisiana, which means the indivual schools decide whether to cover it or not.  At a school like LSU Lab, I’m guessing they’d be willing to defer to the parents, which means there’s a real likelihood that they didn’t teach it.

*a school I’m not familiar with despite having made the rounds of Louisiana elite high school/gifted kid world as a teenager, which means they can’t really be all that elite, unless they’re so elite they don’t even bother to compete at the level of the Louisiana high schools I know of as elite

Also (sorry to dominate on this tangent), the fact that out of every school in Baton Rouge, Jindal Teh Fundie Nutbag Governor decided to send his kid there, kind of makes me think LSU Lab isn’t too heavy on reality-based education.  Especially after doing a little reading - it’s a very small school which has faced local scandal because so many students are the children of state officials, and so few children who apply to the school are accepted for admission.  Jindal himself and people like him would be able to control the school to an unprecedented degree, almost as if they were operating their own private institution for just their own kids.

Which is probably why I haven’t heard of it.

The Opoponax—

I went to high school in Baton Rouge at U High’s main rival, Episcopal High School. I think the best way I could describe U High is that it’s a good school, but not fancy. I mean, I wore uniforms and ate lunch under chandeliers in a large dining hall with beautiful cathedral ceilings… they did not, so much. Their main problem, as you correctly point out, is being used as yet another form of political patronage in this town; however, the education they provide is more or less independent of that. It’s the only school in Baton Rouge that offers the International Baccalaureate program, for example. And since you mentioned wanting to see something in writing, I poked around on their web site a bit, and found this from their list of course offerings (a pdf document linked from this page): “Biology I is a course which provides a fundamental overview of living things. Labs are an integral part of the class. It is taught thematically with an emphasis on evolution, genetics, homeostasis, and the unity and diversity of living things.” Which is a bit of a vague description, but if they were teaching wingnut voodoo, they’d never let the e-word in there in the first place.

Anyway, if Jindal wanted his kid taught crazy bullshit lies, there are *plenty* of other fancy-pants schools he could have sent her to, and nobody would have said one word about it. The fact that he didn’t suggests to me that he’s primarily concerned with looking good to his political peers, and shouldn’t really be taken as a reflection of their curriculum.

(Ironically, Episcopal High is the one high school in that town at which I am dead certain that this intelligent design bullshit won’t be taking hold. The science faculty would cut you dead for suggesting it, but only if the chaplains didn’t get you first.)

Interesting, Matt.  Yeah, the only high schools I could name in all of Louisiana which DEFINITELY teach evolution are Episcopal, Jesuit and maybe a couple other parochial schools in NOLA, Baton Rouge High, Ben Franklin, and my alma mater, LSMSA.  Possibly also Caddo Magnet.

grrr, forgot to mention a couple other things.  The main reason U High’ set me to wondering is that in all my wanderings through the world of crazy-gifted genius kids in Louisiana, I never met a single person who went there.  Ever.  In fact, we lived in BR when I was in preschool and kindergarten, and I got shipped off to LSU for various “poke and prod and test the little evil genius child” sorts of things, and yet my parents sent me to St. Luke’s rather than the LSU lab system.

I’ll also mention that Jindals’ daughter is 6, and thus probably has many years ahead of her before she gets to the evolution unit in high school biology.  Lord knows whether the Jindals will still be in Baton Rouge then.

Let’s think about how that “let them teach both points of view” cover story will play out in the elite schools versus the everyday ones. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few teachers at the elite places did in fact mention Intelligent Design, simply because it’s such a good example of bad pseudoscience. You could do an excellent class on the difference between ID and phlogiston theory, for example. (I think that phlogiston gets a bad rap just because it was wrong. It was based on at least a modicum of evidence, it made testable prediction, and the scientists who propounded the theory were capable of being convinced it was wrong.)

But any science teach in a wingnut-dominated district, even if they chose to present such a reading, would get their head handed to them.

You could do an excellent class on the difference between ID and phlogiston theory, for example.

This sounds more like a college-level class, actually.  A lot of my archaeology coursework involved the professor debunking bad science, and presenting units where we talked about why Theory X was such a horrible way to do research. 

Most high schools do Biology when the students are at the freshman and sophomore level, r which is a bit young to expect that level of critical thinking about research design.  Though maybe some of these elite schools are miles ahead of anything we ever did—that’s the funny thing about going to one of the best high schools in Louisiana.  It’s still in Louisiana.

What I will never understand is why fundies insist that creationism be taught in its various forms as science. I think it ends up undermining their point. The notion that ID is science is so transparent that it’s laughable to anyone with a basic understanding of scientific method. If your creation myth is the truth, why the need to sneak it in under the radar?

If I were them, I would be much more interested in (and I actually think that this is a good idea) having a comparative religion as a requirement in public schools. In the science classroom, you say science explains the natural world through evolution; This is how they say it works; This is their evidence. In the religion classroom , you say religions x and y explain the world through an omnipotent and activist god; This is how they say it works; this is their evidence. Instead of pretending that ID and evolution are two competing scientific ways of understanding the natural world, why not be honest and say that science and religion are two competing epistemological systems for understanding the natural world?

If you really believe that your god is the truth and the way and fills believers’ hearts with that truth, why the need to masquerade as science, and lobby to get that in schools? Why not just say “these are things that people believe” and leave it to your god to show people which of those ways is the truth?

These are real questions btw, if anyone has a good answer. Maybe it’s because I grew up in a radically different religious tradition and am misunderstanding their beliefs about god and truth, but I just don’t get it.

If I were them, I would be much more interested in (and I actually think that this is a good idea) having a comparative religion as a requirement in public schools.

But then you’d have to tell them that other religions exist id and inform the students of their various attributes.  And we can’t have that, now can we?

Actually, the Jesuit model of education follows your idea.  Science class is just science class, and then you have a seperate required course on religion.  When I went to Catholic school, our religion classes were pretty straight-up and academic, too.  We had the history of the Catholic church,  The New Testament, The Old Testament, etc.  People were even allowed to ask questions and discuss the theological underpinnings of the religion they grew up in.  It was kinda neat, really.  In fact, I can proudly say that my high school religion class is what got me started on the road to totally not being a Christian! 

One of my younger brothers had a semester on World Religions or Comparative religion or something, except it was unfortunately full of horrible misinformation.  So I’d ultimately not recommend that approach.  Seriously, they learned all kinds of stupid lies about other religions. 

Religion courses at the college level, however, can be really interesting.  Mainly because universities generally aren’t invested in indoctrinating the students, so you really do stand a chance of getting actual facts.  I think any atheist who doesn’t have a damn good grounding at least an anthropological approach to religion should probably go and do that and then maybe they can come back and we can talk about Santa Claus and Sky Fairies and the like.

Samwise, I went to a Christian college and I remember asking why it was against the rules (an expellable offense!) to have sex. If pre-marital sex really was bad for you and waiting till marriage really was the best way (and I honestly, wholeheartedly believed that it was, at the time), why did we need to make it a rule? Why not just present the evidence and expect everyone to respond appropriately?

My suggested was treated as isolence and I learned to stop asking those questions. I have since learned that many fundamental Christians believe that non-Christian information should NEVER be presented to children, because the satanic pull of these lies (evolution, birth control, whatever) is far stronger than the holy pull of God’s truth.

I will also add that most “fundies” are against a religious class in schools because the schools will be expected to at least attempt to treat other religions fairly (Christians believe this, Muslims believe that, Wiccans believe this other). In my collegiate “religions of the world” class, a man with a doctorate in “religion” told us in class that Wiccans have orgies. When I objected (I knew a bit about Wicca, having done some of my own research at this point), he admitted that he had lied, right in front of the class he admitted this, and no one blinked an eye. Lies are okay, if they are holy lies. Don’t ask me why - I don’t understand this at all.

Back on topic - the FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER rules! (Why should local school boards decide curriculum again?)

Even many Catholics don’t follow the Pope’s lead in this area…

  Damn cafeteria Catholics!

Oh, wait—are we allowed to say that if heresies are from the reactionary side?

Samwise, these assholes should send their children to religious schools.  Of course, they would have to pay for that privilege, but them’s the cards.  But they either don’t want to pony up tens of thousands a year or they simply aren’t patriots and believe in destroying the country by confuzzling their religion with truth.

Every time someone bleats about wanting religion in public schools, they should be called out for being unAmerican.  Not only will it piss them off, it’ll be true.

To clarify my above post, I’d like to also echo Caren.  My above examples definitely applies to parochial schools and impartial and purely academic study at the university level (or adults simply informing themselves in an academic sense in their own private time for their own personal edification), and definitely not anything I’d like to see in the public school system.

I have since learned that many fundamental Christians believe that non-Christian information should NEVER be presented to children, because the satanic pull of these lies (evolution, birth control, whatever) is far stronger than the holy pull of God’s truth.

It’s amazing to realize that I experience reality in such a profoundly different way than so many people around me. I can say that intellectually I recognize that people believe this, but I will never understand it. I cannot imagine what it must be like to live with the devil as a real force in your life.

One of my younger brothers had a semester on World Religions or Comparative religion or something, except it was unfortunately full of horrible misinformation.  So I’d ultimately not recommend that approach.  Seriously, they learned all kinds of stupid lies about other religions.

I don’t think this possibility (probability?) is an acceptable reason not too have comparative religion or world religion courses. It’s a reason to be vigilant and make sure that we do it right. My history and world culture classes were full of bad information, misinformation, and what looking back were probably outright lies, but I don’t think most people would argue that we shouldn’t teach history or social studies.

I think the main reason I don’t want Jindal to be VP is that every day would be like a flashback to the podunk swamp town I grew up in, and the Catholic high school I was forced to attend there.
The Opoponax on 06/16 at 08:45 AM

His power base is the podunk towns. duh. He knows what biology is. He graduated Brown in biology degree with honor and was the pres of LS-U system. He knows all the bullshit. He knows his choice is limited. Either he does the BS appeasing the religious right or the other game in town is LA corrupt Dem money machine politics that give us people like Carville and Landreu.

It’s LA politics. Voodoo and money rules.

Between Blanco and Jindal. I am taking Jindal any day. Blanco is republican push over. The worst combination of the world (Dem machine and corruption plus Repugs push over.)

Bayou Billy, maybe I’m just really dense, but how exactly is an actual wingnut governor better than someone who just can’t get anything done?

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