Sunday, August 1, 2010

Teaching nonsense

In Australia, fundamentalist Christians are teaching complete nonsense to elementary school children in public schools - yes, in public schools - in their Religious Instruction classes. Here are some excerpts from the article:

Primary school students are being taught that man and dinosaurs walked the Earth together and that there is fossil evidence to prove it.


Students have been told Noah collected dinosaur eggs to bring on the Ark, and Adam and Eve were not eaten by dinosaurs because they were under a protective spell.

Set Free Christian Church's Tim McKenzie said when students questioned him why dinosaur fossils carbon dated as earlier than man, he replied that the great flood must have skewed the data.

PhD researcher Cathy Byrne found in a NSW-based survey that scripture teachers tended to discourage questioning, emphasised submission to authority and excluded different beliefs. She said 70 per cent of scripture teachers thought children should be taught the Bible as historical fact.

A parent of a Year 5 student on the Sunshine Coast said his daughter was ostracised to the library after arguing with her scripture teacher about DNA.

"The scripture teacher told the class that all people were descended from Adam and Eve," he said.

"My daughter rightly pointed out, as I had been teaching her about DNA and science, that 'wouldn't they all be inbred'?

"But the teacher replied that DNA wasn't invented then."

Crazy, isn't it? Apparently, "any interested lay person" can conduct these half-hour classes. Although parents can opt out, their children tend to be ostracized and discriminated against. Well, sure. It's always difficult for any child who appears different than the rest.

According to the article, three in ten Australians think that dinosaurs and people coexisted in the past! Hard to believe, isn't it? But I'd hate to see the numbers here in America. At least we don't have religious nuts teaching this kind of lunacy in our public schools, not yet, anyway. But I hate to think of what children are being taught in private schools, or when being home-schooled.

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