The group, Citizens for Objective Public Education, had criticized the standards developed by Kansas, 25 other states and the National Research Council for treating both evolution and climate change as key scientific concepts to be taught from kindergarten through 12th grade. The Kansas State Board of Education adopted them in June to replace evolution-friendly standards that had been in place since 2007. The new standards, like the ones they replaced, reflect the mainstream scientific view that evolution is well-established…. The nonprofit organization based in the small community of Peck, south of Wichita, was joined in its lawsuit by 15 parents from across the state with a total of 18 children — most of them in public schools — and two taxpayers from the Kansas City-area community of Lake Quivira. The parents say they’re Christians who want to instill a belief in their children that “life is a creation made for a purpose.”…. “The state’s job is simply to say to students, ‘How life arises continues to be a scientific mystery and there are competing ideas about it,’” said John Calvert, a Lake Quivira attorney involved in the lawsuit. …
There’s a reason the Founding Fathers believed in the separation of Church and State. They understood that nothing good comes of mixing religion with politics. The same can be said for religion and education, because when you commingle the two, what you end up with more often than not is indoctrination. These days, one need look no farther than Texas to understand what can happen when religious zealots unshakably believe their faith trumps empirical, provable truth and fact.
I don’t mean to say that religion has no place in education. Faith is not the enemy of knowledge, and vice-versa. Neither has the answers to all of the questions we face…but when religious faith is held to be superior to scientific truth, we’re on the verge of teaching children to ignore the demonstrable and the provable in favor of faith and dogma. This is great if we want to raise a generation of Christian soldiers marching as to war, obedient to a fault and generally incapable of independent and/or critical thought. If we’re looking to educate children who will be able to thrive in an increasingly competitive global economy, we can’t pretend that creationism is as scientifically valid as evolution. Faith isn’t equivalent to what’s demonstrable, repeatable, and provable.
Despite the important-sounding name, “Citizens for Objective Public Education” is neither objective nor about education. It’s about authoritarian Christian zealots elevating faith over science in order to create a generation of unquestioning and blindly obedient children trained to do what they’re told without stopping to think about the ramifications.
If this country is to have a future as a great power, if we’re to have any hope at all of remaining competitive with growing economies like China, India, and South Korea, the separation of Church and State must be maintained. If we allow our educational system to be hijacked by religious zealots, how long will it be before we look more like Iran or Afghanistan than the American we know today?
How life arises is no more a scientific mystery than radical Christianity is a recipe for peace and justice. Our tax dollars shouldn’t be used to turn our public schools into publicly-funded evangelical churches. If parents insist on indoctrinating their children, there are plenty of religiously-affiliated private schools available to be used for that purpose. It’s a horrible thing to contemplate, but in this country parents have the absolute right to corrupt, indoctrinate, and/or morally and intellectually hobble their progeny as they see fit. That’s not “obejctive public education;” it’s brain-washing. Until and unless the State gains the power to protect children from their hyper-religious parents, zealots will have the right to fill their little heads with whatever falsehoods and fantasies they deem to be appropriate. Kansas and Texas represent the tip of an iceberg when it comes to ignorance, reaction, and zealotry…and in the end, we’ll all be poorer for it.
