Sometimes actually reading what someone has written will put something you find distasteful or an attack into a context that completely changes the nature of what you think is being said.

If you are truly happy to just step around the random asshat student, then what’s the problem? Otherwise, fix the problem if your ideological knee-jerk can be anesthetized long enough for you to recognize what the problem is. And I’ll assume you apologized for the unwarranted attack.

Sometimes we just have to have balls to operate in this world, and hope for the best.

And for the record, I am not a primary school teacher. I intend to go into academia, but when I teach it will be at a university level. I just pay a lot of attention to this issue and the problems that come up, when they actually make news. Based on the experiences of a whole lot of teachers, your solution is easier said than done.

What are you talking about? Where am I saying creationism ought to be taught in the classroom? All I’m making are counter arguments that any advocate AGAINST creationism might give, if he as an adult teacher could respond to a question asked TO him by a youngster without fear.

Otherwise, what’s the problem? Tell the kid you can’t answer his question, and keep moving. He doesn’t have the right to take over your class. Is there an objection to this?

Otherwise, clarify exactly what it is you CAN do to respond to the kid, and do those things.

This isn’t rocket science. You’re the adult. Take charge. Or, find another career where you don’t have to put up with so much malarkey.

Yes they are. And they would not only be wrong, it would also be illegal for them to make your life a living hell because you did cut it off abruptly or without an interest in answering student “questions.” But making said teacher’s life a living hell happens often and sometimes they even get away with it – there are ways they can get away with firing or disciplining a teacher for that, without making it about that. That happens all the time.

Even if the teacher successfully sues for their job or whatever, they are still pretty screwed. They either have to go back into a hostile work environment or they have to try to find a job at another school – contrary to popular belief, being a whistleblower or being right, doesn’t make another school to keen on hiring someone who was part of some big stink at their last job.

Being on the side of the law, doesn’t = sunshine and fucking roses. Sometimes it = misery and trying to find a new profession where you can get past having made a big stink somewhere you used to work.

While the federal government has too much hand in the running of public schools through funding, that is not the issue here.

This isn’t an issue of federal law or state laws, it is an issue of the constitution. I am bloody fucking glad that the constitution applies to the states, because if it didn’t, we would all have a hell of a lot less freedom – though the degree and types of restrictions would vary from state to state.

The involvement of the federal government in this context is minimal and peripheral – as well as incredibly critical. Without the same constitutional protections that mean public school teachers have to step carefully in the context being discussed in Greg’s post and this thread, are what protect us from seeing majority religions taught wholesale in public schools.

You would like to see public schools exempt from constitutional protections? Whether you intend it or not, you are saying you would like to see mandatory prayer in schools – in nearly every state. You are saying you would like to see creationism taught in the public schools in a great many states, with evolution either ignored or “debunked” by creationist “science.” You are saying that you would like to see the majority faith being taught as absolute truth and classes adjusted accordingly.

The bottom line is that there are few places where actual science would take a front seat over the majority fucking delusions.

I for one, am more than happy to step carefully around the random fucking asshat student, sent by asshat pastors or parents to disrupt in this way – the alternative is too frightening to contemplate.