Southern Republicans Are Using Charter Schools To Inject Religion Into Public Schools

A plague is a widespread affliction or calamity with pervasive and serious consequences for its victims, and is often associated with a sudden destructive influx or injurious outbreak. America is suffering a widespread calamitous affliction that is having serious consequences for its victims, innocent bystanders, children, and the future of the nation. The Founding Fathers foresaw the plague coming and prescribed a simple remedy that 21^st Century Republicans have ignored, rejected, and shredded in an attempt to infect every adult in America. Over the past few years, Republicans in states have focused their energy on using the public school system, and taxpayer dollars, to poison children’s’ minds with fallacy and mythology disguised as science, and besides creating a generation of imbeciles, they are shredding the Constitution while the courts, the federal government, and parents stay silent out of fear of breaking America’s cardinal rule; do not challenge Christian theocrats.

There is a concerted effort in primarily southern Republican-controlled states to use sketchy and horribly underperforming charter schools to inject a healthy dose of religion into science and history classes using funding for public schools. The practice is already underway in Louisiana with Arkansas and Indiana closing in on Texas as states blatantly violating the Constitution by shifting public money into Responsive Education Solutions, a group of publicly supported charter schools. Responsive Education Solutions currently has over 65 campuses with 17,000 students enrolled at a cost to taxpayers of more than $82 million in Texas alone. RES is expanding with 20 new campuses due to open in Texas in 2014 and taxpayers will be picking up the tab to teach the bible as science in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

The problem with all charter schools is that they are run independently, but are still considered public schools because they are funded with taxpayer dollars. For a student enrolled in an RES charter school to pass biology they have to study “Knowledge Units,” workbooks that overtly and underhandedly discredit evidence-based science and teach creationism as science in public-school classrooms. Responsive Ed not only discredits science, the opening section of a workbook section on the origin of life plagiarizes the Christian bible and states, “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.” The so-called science curriculum also states emphatically that “scientists question the validity of the conclusions concerning the age of the Earth” to mislead students into believing there is serious scientific debate about the age of the Earth, the nature of the geological record, and validity of biological sciences.

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It is well-acknowledged that the evidence that the Earth was formed between 4 and 5 billion years ago is overwhelming, but an entire generation of students in Texas, Arkansas, Indiana, and several other theocratic states will go into the world certain the Earth was blinked into existence 6,000 years ago by an all-powerful deity in need of beings to torment. The communications director for a watchdog organization monitoring the spread of theocracy, Dan Quinn, said that “These materials should raise a big red flag for any parent or school administrator. It’s bad enough that they promote the same discredited anti-evolution arguments that scientists debunked a long time ago. But the materials teach religious beliefs that the courts have repeatedly ruled have no place in a public school science classroom.” In Missouri, Republicans are proposing a law that eliminates the concept of a public school science classroom because science contradicts the Christian bible.

According to National Center for Science Education (NCSE) deputy director Glenn Branch, “House Bill 1472 would eviscerate the teaching of biology in Missouri” because the Republican bill allows parents to pull their children from any science classes that teach the theory of evolution that will have far-reaching effects on several scientific disciplines. HB 1472 is co-sponsored by Republican theocrats Rick Brattin and Andy Koenig who are no strangers to authoring religious legislation disguised as science curriculum according to the NSCE. The two bible-thumpers have crafted several bills in the past that ordered teachers in all public learning institutions, including colleges and junior colleges, to give equal instructional time to the Christian creation story as they do real science that fortunately have not yet been passed into law. Their House bill does the next best thing and effectively eliminates instruction in biological sciences, geological science, meteorological science, and astronomical sciences because they contradict the Genesis story that the Earth, and indeed the Universe, is a little over 6,000 years old.

The idea of teaching biology, geology, or astronomy without acknowledging the Earth is over 6,000 years old is impossible according to a 2008 white paper that states, “Evolution inextricably pervades the biological sciences; it therefore pervades, or ought to pervade, biology education at the K-12 level. There simply is no alternative to learning about it; there is no substitute activity. A teacher who tries to present biology without mentioning evolution is like a director trying to produce Hamlet without casting the prince.” It is also true of geological science, history, and astronomy that are all dependent on the premise that the Earth is over 6,000 years old, but Missouri students, at least those in households that believe the Christian bible is science and the law of the land, will forever remain steeped in superstition and mythos like aboriginal peoples cut off from civilization.

This Republican plot to infect the minds of America’s youth with religious instruction in public schools has been struck down in the courts time and time again as unconstitutional. That Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Indiana are using taxpayer money meant for public schools to fund bible instruction in charter schools is also unconstitutional and yet there is little outcry due to America’s unspoken 1^st commandment that “thou shalt not question Christians imposing religion on the population.” Forget that evolution is unquestioned and observable, or that the preponderance of scientists agree the Earth is between 4 and 5 billion years old, what is happening in southern-state charter schools is patently unconstitutional and despite court decisions ruling they are in violation of the Constitution they proceed as if the nation’s founding document is null and void. In the case of the Missouri legislation giving ignorant parents the right to restrict their children’s education to 6,000 year old mythos, there is no hope except for a court ruling to prevent America having to suffer another generation of superstitious aboriginals who will reproduce and continue America’s decline into a nation of imbeciles.

In Texas, Arkansas, and Indiana the courts, and voters, have a responsibility to disband the educational abomination known as charter schools (more on that later) and impose severe fines on groups like Responsive Education Solutions and force them to repay the tens-of millions of taxpayer dollars to real public schools that endeavor to educate students to compete in the 21^st century and not the Bronze Age. It is a travesty that although evolution is a fact, there is a large swathe of America, primarily across the South, that is inhabited by people who have not evolved beyond cave dwellers who are dumbfounded by science and cling to archaic beliefs Republicans are spreading like plague using taxpayer dollars and biblical legislation. They are violating the Constitution and flushing it like used toilet paper, creating a nation of idiots, and installing the Christian bible as the law of the land with hardly a whimper from a population mortified of abridging the rights of Republican Dominionists plaguing America with a Christian theocracy

Rmuse

Audio engineer and instructor for SAE. Writes op/ed commentary supporting Secular Humanist causes, and exposing suppression of women, the poor, and minorities. An advocate for freedom of religion and particularly, freedom of NO religion.

Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn’t look good.

Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.