Thursday, January 17, 2013

Zack Kopplin on School Vouchers

No sooner had I gotten the last post written when an email from Zack Kopplin appeared in my inbox (mailing list, not personal note) about his attempts to get school vouchers vetoed.  Unfortunately, it shows up on MSNBC, a station I generally avoid.  Kopplin writes:
Over the past few months, I’ve learned creationist vouchers aren’t just a Louisiana problem—they’re an American problem. School vouchers are, as James Gill recently wrote in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, “the answer to a creationist’s prayer.”
Liberty Christian School, in Anderson, Indiana, has field trips to the Creation Museum and students learn from the creationist A Beka curriculum.  Kingsway Christian School, in Avon, Indiana, also has Creation Museum field trips.  Mansfield Christian School, in Ohio, teaches science through the creationist Answers in Genesis website, run by the founder of the Creation Museum.  The school’s Philosophy of Science page says, “the literal view of creation is foundational to a Biblical World View.”  All three of these schools, and more than 300 schools like them, are receiving taxpayer money.
Kopplin then proceeds to give a list of examples, most of which are truly hair-raising.  One would hope that these schools are the exception to the rule and, as I mentioned last post, if this becomes widely known, it will spell doom for the voucher program constitutionally, unless each state passes laws such that the vouchers cannot be used at religiously-based schools.  That is a shame since it will leave quite a few schools in the dark that would, otherwise, benefit from the program.  This is nothing more than an end-run around the court-mandated prohibition of teaching creationism in the public schools.  Surely those that are engaging in this deception know this.  

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