Orleans Parish Says No to Creationism

In a move that surprised many people, Orleans Parish passed a no creationism policy last week for its public schools.  It’s a surprise because Louisiana isn't known for being reasonable where education and religion are concerned.  The sitting governor, Bobby Jindal, is an outspoken creationist and Christian who pushed through the Louisiana Science Education Act in 2008 which basically allows teachers to teach creationism in public schools.  So color me shocked that one small school board in Louisiana went out of its way to stop the insanity.

So what was the impetus for the Orleans Parish school board to make this move?  Basically, the bat-shittery that is the Texas State Board of education caused it.  In 2010, Texas adopted new “standards” which changed social studies and history curriculums to marginalize things like the civil rights movement, religious freedoms, US relationships with the UN, founding fathers like Jefferson and a lot more.  They replaced these items with nonsense like the superiority of American Capitalism, republican philosophies and the founding fathers commitment to secular values.  So why did this matter to the Orleans Parrish school board?  Because Texas is the largest buyer of school books in the nation which means that they can dictate the curriculum of just about every other state, unless those states are willing to pay to have new text books created that don’t include the bullshit.  Basically this small Parish is taking a stand against insanity.

So, what did the Orleans Parish pass?  According to an article at Rawstory.com, they made 2 distinct policy changes:

“No history textbook shall be approved which has been adjusted in accordance with the State of Texas revisionist guidelines nor shall any science textbook be approved which presents creationism or intelligent design as science or scientific theories,”

And

“No teacher of any discipline of science shall teach any aspect of religious faith as science or in a science class, no teacher of any discipline of science shall teach creationism or intelligent design in classes designated as science classes.”

Good for them.  Let’s be completely honest here, religion has no place in the classroom and the Orleans Parish School Board got this one right.  The real truth of the matter is that they shouldn’t have eve nhad to do this because as government organizations, public schools are obligate to be strictly secular in nature and not have any type of religion being taught there.  The only place for religion would be philosophy or comparative religion or mythology, if the schools chose to teach these subjects.  But religion has absolutely no place in science curriculum because it has absolutely no basis in science.  If a teacher is incapable of teaching their discipline without inserting their superstitious beliefs, they have no business teaching in public schools, none-the-less any place else.  Any science teacher who denies evolution and still believes in creationism is not fit to teach science, it’s as simple as that.

The sad reality is that this will mean little to the rest of the nation.  There are far too many idiots who think the earth is 6000 years old and that the bible is both a history and science text book.  There are too many fucking lunatics who deny evolution because they believe the nonsense that they have been brainwashed to believe.  Or they believe creationism simply because science is hard and they are too fucking stupid to understand it.  No matter what the reason, we are going to be fighting this battle against religious ignorance and keeping the bullshit out of our schools for a very long time.  If you want my honest opinion, if you want to keep your kids away from this revisionist nonsense and the religious twisted version of reality, you may want to do what the religious loons do and teach your kids at home.  Anything is better than filling their heads with nonsense and lies that the right will be using to forge the nations thought processes and beliefs for generations to come through public school indoctrination.

That is the real danger of Texas and the power that it holds over education.  With their ability to tell textbook publishers what to put in their texts, they will be able to mind-fuck a whole generation of kids everywhere.  Hopefully, there will be more than just little Orleans Parish standing up against the power that Texas wields.  Only time will tell.