1/26/17::End of the Day

The following was shared by author Chris Rodda (Liars for Jesus 1 & 2), "[i]t's a video that Bruce Wilson put together about the Betsy DeVos-funded project, Student Statemanship Institute. This should answer the questions some were asking about Devos's dominionist Christian agenda. This is the kind of indoctrination that DeVos wants to be paid for with public tax dollars."



As Chris notes, SSI isn't the only such program as David Barton and his sidekick Rick Green run one in Texas called "Patriot Academy." There is also the "mission" of Patrick Henry College, "to train Christian men and women who will lead our nation and shape our culture with timeless biblical values and fidelity to the spirit of the American founding". [See also: God's Next Army https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfdFZG8lYJE Listen very carefully to part 3 and especially part 4. In part 3 they do clips of their classes, each class is like a mini Sunday indoctrination session. In part 4 they talk of the internships, listen to what the issues are that they're attacking - privatization of soc security, estate taxes - think "Jesus Camp" on steroids with much broader implications for all of us.] And who can forget Sarah Palin and the Master's Commission [also from Bruce Wilson https://vimeo.com/1679097]

This is what DeVos and her ilk believe and are striving for in our schools. They want to go the charter or voucher route as gov't oversight is very lax to begin with as well as the belief that the "gov't" doesn't have jurisdiction for oversight.


Trump's voter fraud probe could pave way for tougher voting rules

One of the biggest issues to come out of this push for an investigation by Trump into the possibility of "voter fraud", is tougher voting rules. One aspect being more restrictive voter ID laws. We'll leave the discriminatory BS out of the mix for the moment.

Regardless of the fact that Trump's claim is bogus, it is more fuel for the GOTP. Let's throw a kink in that plan and instead of waiting 2 years (mid-term elections). Whether - your Green, Dem, Independent, or whatever - let's get those without proper ID the assistance they need to secure documents needed.

It took me 10 months to replace my BC. I lived 1500 miles away from my home state and I was adopted. Because I lacked photo ID (stolen) I had to rely on my father to secure a certified copy. My roadblock was simple, for others it's not so easy.

South Dakota's antiscience bill passes the Senate | NCSE

Kentucky bill seeks to make the bible part of public school curriculum

Religious freedom bill dies in Colorado House – The Denver Post

This is a good thing people. Simply put, had this bill passed it would have legalized discrimination against LGBTQI people.

",,,a thinly veiled attempt to legalize discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. And, they fear a slippery slope — how far could someone go in claiming religious belief to justify ignoring anti-discrimination laws?"

The Reich has hijacked the phrase "religious freedom", there is no such thing in these type of bills. Remember SB1062 in AZ or the debacle in IN? It's the same.

EPA Scientists' Work May Face 'Case By Case' Review By Trump Team, Official Says : The Two-Way : NPR 

Any review would directly contradict the agency's current scientific integrity policy, which was published in 2012. It prohibits "all EPA employees, including scientists, managers and other Agency leadership from suppressing, altering, or otherwise impeding the timely release of scientific findings or conclusions."

It also would likely have a chilling effect on the agency's ability to conduct research on the environmental issues it is charged with regulating.

Ericksen's comments come just days after Trump's team ordered agencies to limit their external communications to the public. Employees at the EPA, the Department of Agriculture and the Interior Department, among others, have been instructed not to post on social media accounts. At the EPA, the staff was told not to speak to the news media.

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PS::  Going back to an old format to see if that will kick-start my writing juices!!

Student trip to Glendive creationist museum canceled over legal concerns

Glendive third-graders will no longer visit their town's creationist museum amid concerns that the annual school trip to learn about dinosaurs violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

School district administrators had authorized this year's field trip to the Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum but reversed course last week after receiving a letter from a Washington, D.C., advocacy group calling the school-sponsored event illegal. Their decision dashed the hopes of many of the children, some parents said.

The Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum is the second-largest dinosaur museum in Montana and the only to assert a literal, biblical view of world history in which humans and dinosaurs are said to have coexisted. Alongside full animal skeletons, its exhibit halls include a biblical history room, a reconstruction of Noah's Ark and dioramas showing humans together with dinosaurs.

One hundred or so third-grade students in the Glendive School District were invited to the field trip, originally to be held Thursday during school hours. Parents were required to sign permission slips and pay the museum entrance fee in order for their children to attend.

Student trip to Glendive creationist museum canceled over legal concerns

See also:

Please Think Of The Children: Mont. Public School Had No Business Sending Kids To Creationist Attraction

Youngsters' dino museum trip dashed by atheists

Louisiana science education: School boards, principals, and teachers endorse creationism in public school.

In another email exchange with Rowland, a parent had complained that a different teacher, Cindy Tolliver, actually taught that evolution was a “fact.” This parent complained that Tolliver was “pushing her twisted religious beliefs onto the class.” Principal Rowland responded, “I can assure you this will not happen again.”

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The Louisiana Science Education Act, passed by the state legislature in 2008, permits science teachers to use supplemental materials to “critique” evolution, opening a backdoor that these teachers are using, as intended, to teach creationism. Such lessons are allowed under this Louisiana law, but they are illegal under federal law.

“We know that one in eight high school biology teachers advocate for creationism, even though it's unconstitutional,” says Josh Rosenau of the National Center for Science Education. “These emails make clear that many teachers are interpreting the Louisiana Science Education Act as allowing such unconstitutional and scientifically-misleading lessons.”

On April 22 the Louisiana Senate Education Committee voted on a bill to repeal the Science Education Act, referred to by many on both sides as the “creationism act.” This was the fifth vote since 2010, and legislators voted 4–3 to keep creationism in Louisiana classrooms.

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Louisiana school districts are clearly breaking the law all the time, but the Louisiana Legislature still refuses to repeal the Science Education Act. These newly released emails, from districts across the state, show that this law is being used systematically to teach creationism in public schools. This puts Louisiana on a collision course with a First Amendment lawsuit.

I asked Andrew Seidel, a lawyer for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which litigates separation of church and state cases, about the legal situation surrounding the law. “It was clear when the [Science Education Act] was passed that it was just another shameful attempt to circumvent the First Amendment,” Seidel told me. He went on to warn teachers against teaching creationism, and said, “No state law, including the Louisiana Science Education Act, can shield public schools and public school teachers from liability for violating the U.S. Constitution.” Several separation of church and state advocacy groups, including the FFRF and the ACLU, have their eye on Louisiana.

Louisiana science education: School boards, principals, and teachers endorse creationism in public school.

Creationism and evolution in school: Religious students can’t learn natural selection.

Education researchers have studied how well religious students are able to learn about evolution. Some researchers suggest that creationist beliefs prevent students from understanding evolution, since creationism teaches that a supernatural being created the world and all its life forms. But others claim students can understand evolution even if they don’t accept that it happened. What does this conflict over how students learn about evolution mean for Wortman and science teachers like him? And what does it mean for the students, like that younger, creationist version of me, who sit in biology classrooms? Can they cope with evolution?

One point of consensus exits among science education researchers: Religion affects how people understand evolution. “The role of religion is really robust,” said Josh Rosenau, a programs and policy director for the National Center for Science Education. “I have no question that a person’s view of their own religion shapes how that person is prepared to respond to questions about evolution.”

Leslie Rissler is an evolutionary ecologist and biogeographer who taught an upper-level evolution course for biology majors for more than 10 years at the University of Alabama. Some of her students said their high school science teachers—even in public schools—skipped the evolution unit altogether or taught creationism alongside evolution as an alternative scientific theory. A 2007 Penn State study involving 926 science educators found that about 13 percent of biology teachers are openly sympathetic to creationism in their classroom. The comments about those creationist science teachers that Rissler overheard in her class prompted her research addressing evolution education, published online last fall in Evolution: Education and Outreach.

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Rissler concluded that deeply religious students are less likely to either understand or accept evolution than are their less religious peers. “The more religious are less scientifically literate,” she said. “The data are clear on this. It’s just that people don’t like to hear it.”

Creationism and evolution in school: Religious students can’t learn natural selection.

Update on Ohio's antiscience bill | NCSE

A sponsor of Ohio's House Bill 597, which if enacted would require the state's science standards to "prohibit political or religious interpretation of scientific facts in favor of another," confirmed that local school districts would be allowed to teach creationism along with evolution and global warming denial alongside climate science.

Andy Thompson (R-District 95), who along with Matt Huffman (R-District 4) introduced HB 597, told the Columbus Dispatch (August 20, 2014), "we want to provide them the flexibility to consider all perspectives, not just on matters of faith or how the Earth came into existence, but also global warming and other topics that are controversial."

The language of the bill troubles those concerned about the integrity of science education in the Buckeye State. Patricia Princehouse, director of Case Western Reserve University's Program in Evolutionary Biology, told the Dispatch, "It sounds exactly like the kind of things intelligent design and creationist promoters say."

Update on Ohio's antiscience bill | NCSE

UPDATE::South Carolina Legislator Wants To Force Students To Learn Creationism

Well, it’s happened again. The great state of South Carolina has demonstrated that when it comes to ignorance of science, its legislators take a back seat to no one. They must have been jealous of Kansas, Louisiana, and Texas.

Last week, SC legislator Mike Fair, a Republican, proposed a new standard for teaching high school biology that encourages teachers to teach alternatives to evolution, by which he means creationism. He’s been working on this for months; last spring he tried to pass a law that would have required students and teachers to construct arguments against evolution. After failing to get that through his committee, he has proposed a new law that says:

“evolution is continually open to and subject to experimental and observational testing.”

Except of course that’s not what he really means.

Let’s be clear: Mike Fair doesn’t want evolution to be taught in public schools. Instead, he wants to force students, using the power of government, to adopt his conservative Christian views, which teaches that God created all living things just as they are today, about 6000 years ago (or 4000 years, depending on who you ask).

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Fair and his colleagues in the Republican-dominated S.C. House of Representatives argue that no, they aren’t forcing teachers to teach creationism — they just want to teach the controversy. Equally appalling is the position of the S.C. Superintendent of Education, Mick Zais, who agreed with this sentiment, saying:

“We ought to teach both sides and let students draw their own conclusions.”

No, you shouldn’t. There is no scientific controversy about evolution. Evolutionary theory is based on an enormous edifice of facts, with literally tens of thousands of scientific papers providing evidence to support it. There is no competing theory out there.

South Carolina Legislator Wants To Force Students To Learn Creationism

Creationism in classroom causes concern

(http://thesoutherneronline.com/frontpage/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/CREATIONISM.jpg)

The original story broke in the Henry W. Grady High student newspaper, the Southerner. Written by Josh Weinstock and Archie Kinnane in May, the boys reported on the presentation of creationist ideas in a freshman level biology class drawing attention to a cartoon since attributed to Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis and the Kentucky Creation Museum (see: page 101).

“[I] have gay parents, and [the cartoon] said that evolution caused homosexuality and it implied that to be negative, so I was pretty offended by it,” Cooley said.

Cooley said that another student emailed the administration complaining about the PowerPoint.

Freshman Griffin Ricker, who is also in Jones’ class, said Jones got angry with the class when she found out students had notified the administration.

“She had a 10-minute rant,” Ricker said. “She yelled and said, ‘This is on the APS website, and it was certified.’”

Freshman Lily Soto, who switched from Jones’ biology class after the first semester, said Jones had refused to teach evolution when the class approached the portion of the cirriculum.

“She always had random comments about [creationism],” Soto said. “If someone would ask if we were going to learn evolution, she was like, ‘No, I don’t teach that.’”

Robin Rosen, parent of a freshman, took her child out of Jones’ class after the first semester. She said she wouldn’t have talked to The Southerner if her child were still in Jones’ class, for fear of retaliation.

“I was offended, but more shocked and disturbed that a teacher in [APS] could get away with putting that in a classroom,” Rosen said. “Offended is probably the wrong word at this point; it is very troubling to me that a teacher who is in a position of influence over children in a public school can put something up [like the cartoon].”

Besides the obvious, creationism is not science, the boys cite fellow science teacher Nikolai Curtis, "“If you start adopting religious doctrine as a form of teaching, you start advocating for a religion,” Curtis said. “There is no national religion. When you teach religion in a public school setting, you are reinforcing a national religion, and that’s not acceptable.”

But here is the problem, in the process of "teaching the controversy" (for lack of a better way of putting it), Jones demonized women who exercise their right to choose and gay people. She also associated evolution with racism. (My assumption based on what Ham states::the Sanger/Planned Parenthood/Nazi argument prevalent in some circles of religionists as an argument against evolution.)**

Under more mundane circumstances, I would pass this off as naivete; an inexperienced teacher. But with the controversy being so in the news and Ham's views concerning the debate, I find this hard to believe 

From Ham's 2002 posting, "The Evolution Connection:"

Many Christians, including most Christian leaders, don’t understand the connection of evolution to the social ills of our culture and the difficulties in getting people interested in Christianity. They see evolution as something totally separate from such issues. I think the main reason for this misunderstanding is because many Christians have been indoctrinated to believe that evolution is factual science.
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It is true that most evolutionary scientists, the media and the average public school textbook today present atheistic (perhaps subtly rather than overtly) evolution as fact. Students are taught that the universe and all life arose by strictly material causes. God is not given any place in the ‘origin of anything.’ Over the years, the teaching of evolution has intensified in our school systems and through the media. So much so that the average person believes that scientists have proved the earth is billions of years old and that the different forms of life arose through an evolutionary process of death and struggle.
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The more evolutionary ideas pervade the culture, the more a person’s whole way of thinking will change. For them, right and wrong will be whatever they determine for themselves, if they can get away with it. If they are just an animal, then no-one owns them, so their body is their own. Thus, why can’t they do what they want with sex? Also, if this life is all there is, and death ends it all, then if things get tough, why not commit suicide now and get out of it—after all, a person won’t remember they ever had life, so what’s the point anyway? And, if we get rid of spare animals by killing them, then what’s wrong with getting rid of spare babies by abortion?
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Some people misunderstand me when I say there’s a connection between evolution and these social ills mentioned above. I’m not saying that evolution is the cause of abortion or school violence. What I am saying is that the more a culture abandons God’s Word as the absolute authority, and the more a culture accepts an evolutionary philosophy, then the way people think, and their attitudes, will also change. I’m not saying that a student says to himself, ‘Now, I’m just an animal—I know evolution is true—therefore there’s no basis for right or wrong—so there’s nothing to stop me from shooting my teacher.’

And we are the ones accused of having an agenda!!

What this incident and others before it illustrate, how science is under attack by religious extremists and why creationism should be banned permanently in schools. It's why I think we should follow the lead presented by the United Kingdom.

Creationism is not scientifically valid. It’s a religious story that has zero evidence to support it. It has no business being taught in science classes. A point clearly brought forth in the Kitzmiller v Dover (2005) decision (although Edwards v Aguilar -1987- is an important decision, Kitzmiller is more recent). As Justice Jones so aptly states: "The overwhelming evidence at trial established that ID is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory." (p. 43)

I won't go as far as some and say that Jones is a disgrace to the teaching profession but I do agree if she wants to teach Christian dogma, she should get a job at a church, not a school. Kids suffer when they don't learn and understand the biology that they need to in order to be successful in college and life in general. The parents and the community suffer when school districts allow violations of the law to push a political or religious agenda. They lose the inevitable lawsuits and waste taxpayer money that could be better spent on education. Religion is for church, not for public schools.

Creationism in classroom causes concern

 **Now, don’t get me wrong here. People are not stupid. They are just being consistent with their presuppositions. Hitler was not silly. Some even say in some ways he was a genius, albeit he was warped in his thinking. But he consistently applied what he believed about origins. This led to the deaths of millions of people. Abortionists today are not intellectually inferior. They are just being consistent with their presuppositions, the foundation they ultimately have for their thinking.

Bob Dyer: Cuyahoga Falls students get faulty science - Local - Ohio

In the immortal words of the great philosopher Alice Cooper, school’s out for the summer.

Here’s hoping the long vacation will enable a group of students from Cuyahoga Falls to forget some of the things they were taught this spring.

On one of the last days of the school year, a big yellow Cuyahoga Falls school bus was parked in front of the Akron Fossils & Science Center in Copley, just south of Copley Circle.

Giving your students a science lesson at the Copley Fossils & Science Center is the equivalent of hiring Alice Cooper to be your principal.

This “science” center is nothing of the sort. It is a paean to creationism.

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So why would an educational institution bring students to a place that teaches the opposite of what is taught in its classrooms?

Two reasons:

•The name of the place is deceptive.

•Educators are not doing their basic homework.

Cuyahoga Falls Superintendent and CEO Todd Nichols says that last week he wasn’t able to get ahold of the teacher who organized the May 30 field trip, but says she is new, and he assumes she just didn’t know what she was getting into.

She’s in good company.

As I noted five years ago, the name fooled the Akron Zoo, the Cleveland Orchestra and even COSI, the renowned science center in Columbus. All three groups contributed to a fundraiser for the center without understanding what they were contributing to.

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Now, wouldn’t you think that if people truly believe in their mission, they would be right up front about the nature of that mission? But when I asked why the place isn’t called the “Akron Creation Museum” or the “Akron Intelligent Design Center,” I was told that wasn’t necessary because their “science” deserves equal time.

Bob Dyer: Cuyahoga Falls students get faulty science - Local - Ohio

5 States Gunning to Make Their Kids As Scientifically Illiterate As Possible by Teaching Creationist B.S. | Alternet

In the US however, the battle to bring creationism and intelligent design into the classroom is alive and well. Ever since the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in which the teaching of evolution was found to be a violation of Tennessee law, banning the teaching of human evolution in any publicly funded school.

The battle finally came to a head in 1987 when the Supreme Court heard Edwards v. Aguillard, in which Don Aguilard took the state of Louisiana to court over a law that required that creationism be taught in public schools.

The case, which made it all the way to the Supreme Court dealt a massive blow to the religious right when the court ruled that teaching creationism in publicly funded schools was unconstitutional because the original law was specifically intended to promote a particular religion.

A similar blow was dealt decades later when in 2005 when a US District Court ruled that intelligent design was not scientific and even encompassed creationism and teaching either to be unconstitutional.

So one would think that since both creation myths that are endorsed by the religious right have been struck down in the highest courts in the country that this debate would be settled. How one earth could we still be fighting the creationist proponents when they have been dealt solid deathblows?

According to the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), an organization that tracks anti-science bills around the US that deal with evolution and global warming, almost every southern and bible-belt state in the US has at the very least attempted to pass education bills that either remove evolution from the curriculum or make it legal for teachers to offer alternative theories to human origins.

The states fighting to pass these laws are predictable if you pay attention to any national politics, the more red a state votes, the more it fights to remove science education from its schools or at the very least, replace science classes with a form of Bible study.

So what states and bills have been the worst to science education? Here are five examples of states either enacted or relentlessly fighting to pass anti-evolution and or anti-science bills to change their educational standards to appease the Christian Right.

5 States Gunning to Make Their Kids As Scientifically Illiterate As Possible by Teaching Creationist B.S. | Alternet