Louisiana is not exactly the poster child for the separation of church and state.
There have been persistent problems in the state, stretching back several decades. Louisiana, you will recall, passed the “balanced treatment” act mandating that public school teach creationism alongside evolution. It was invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987. Read more
There are days when fundamentalist zealots do something so off the wall that I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, so I do a little bit of both.
Today is one of those days. This emotional roller-coaster comes courtesy of a band of extremists who have fine-tuned creationism and have concluded – wait for it – that Copernicus and Galileo were wrong: The Earth really is the center of the universe. Read more
Creationism continues to make headlines in Louisiana, where a science teacher is under investigation for an unfortunate letter to the editor. Charlotte Hinson, who teaches in a Caddo Parish public school, wrote to the Shreveport Times after that newspaper published articles favorable to evolution.
Hinson slammed the articles for treating creationism as an unproven theory, and evolution as fact. “That is strictly opinion,” she wrote.
Read more
Last night’s debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham on the subject of creationism provided no real surprises to anyone on either side of the issue. But the event, which drew an incredible audience of roughly 500,000 online viewers in addition to a sold-out live audience, didn’t just hold interest for scientists. Read more
A company called Responsive Education Solutions runs charter schools in several states, most of them in Texas. These schools receive millions in taxpayer support every year. Read more
Note: Today is the federal observance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. This blog post is a re-publication on an item that originally appeared on Jan. 13, 2006.
Today marks the federal observance of Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday. Since his tragic assassination on April 4, 1968, King's memory has been pressed into service in highly unusual ways that King himself would not have supported.
Most people associate school gym classes with ill-fitting outfits, impatient coaches and diabolical rope climbs. But one school district in Ohio wants to make gym classes feel more like Sunday school. Read more
Americans United has reported frequently on the slew of Religious Right groups trying to test and redefine the bounds of “religious liberty.” Now it seems yet another organization has joined the fray, claiming that teaching evolution in public schools forces atheism on students and violates the “religious liberty” of some parents. Read more
Louisiana’s voucher program is in some real trouble thanks to a federal lawsuit alleging that the scheme hinders federally mandated desegregation in many school districts, but before answering to the U.S. Department of Justice, the state will have to deal with a 20-year-old who advocates for sound science education. Read more
