This is disturbing, but since civilization is ending as we speak, I suppose it is not surprising. From the Washington Post:
Any resident in Florida can now challenge what kids learn in public schools, thanks to a new law that science education advocates worry will make it harder to teach evolution and climate change.
The legislation, which was signed by Gov. Rick Scott (R) this week and goes into effect Saturday, requires school boards to hire an “unbiased hearing officer” who will handle complaints about instructional materials, such as movies, textbooks and novels, that are used in local schools. Any parent or county resident can file a complaint, regardless of whether they have a student in the school system. If the hearing officer deems the challenge justified, he or she can require schools to remove the material in question….
Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Council for Science Education, said that affidavits filed by supporters of the bill suggest that science instruction will be a focus of challenges. One affidavit from a Collier County resident complained that evolution and global warming were taught as “reality.” Another criticized her child’s sixth-grade science curriculum, writing that “the two main theories on the origin of man are the theory of evolution and creationism,” and that her daughter had only been taught about evolution.
“It’s just the candor with which the backers of the bill have been saying, ‘Yeah, we’re going to go after evolution, we’re going to go after climate change,'” that has him worried, Branch said.
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Florida – Quelle surprise /s
That’s OK – Florida won’t be a state much longer anyway, as Neptune takes over and annexes it to Atlantis.
Wow. (Obscenities) this is bad. (Understatement.)
@2.Bruce Jensen : Yeah, not so sure about the okay part given the implications for massive human suffering and loss involved – and the implications for so much of the rest of the globe including places like Bangladesh that have done a whole lot less to deserve it.
That would be annexation of US territory by Oceania. Or the ccean, anyway.
Someone asked a good question on slashdot on this subject. Is there a process to complain about bias in the “unbiased officer”?
Because we know that if the office holder was not telling them that they had to teach creationism as an alternative, they’d never be put in the job in the first place.
So if someone complains about “In God We Trust” or whatever, the officer will ignore them. If someone complains that only xtian creationism was being mentioned and that the other 6000 myths needed adding, this would be ignored. Or if the complete lack of any evidence and disagreement of every piece of evidence we have with creationism or even ID were brought up or asked to be included, this would not happen.
Because they’d pick the right biased person.
So is there any process to get the biased person chucked out?
@Wow:
Yes. You send a complaint to the unbiased hearing officer. If he deems himself biased, he will be removed from office.
Yeah. Probably.
Hey, maybe they’ll have a tribunal set up so you can complain to them about the officer.
And it’ll be the same one who assigned the officer, so you go in knowing your complaint is basically to them “You done fucked it up.”.
I mean, honestly, they probably will do that. If only because if you managed to get the officer changed, you still have to get rid of the panel, who were set up to just replace them with a carbon copy. Therefore undoing this cluster requires beating two moral majority ™ busybodies who will paint you as satan’s tinder fuckbuddy when it comes to getting support in the community. Pretty much ensuring failure for decades.
I thought tjhis was already settled by Federal law in at least a half-dozen court cases–it’s illegal to teach creationism in public schools. Period. And the Federal Constitution supercedes any state law.
Sounds like the creationuts are on their way to losing yet another court case………..
RE: “it’s illegal to teach creationism in public schools”
Court cases take a long time. And let’s not forget that at one time it was illegal to sell alcoholic beverages in the U. S. too but the demand was still there and the law was flouted just about everywhere. Keep in mind that there are many, many school districts in the U. S. and many, many creationists, including many elementary and high school teachers.
The only bright spot I can see in the latest creationist ploy in Florida is that once evolution and AGW are pushed out of the schools, they become forbidden knowledge and thus more attractive to teenagers in their rebellious years.
In the somewhat analogous case of history, the subject became more interesting to me when I found how much U. S. history had been left out — mostly the parts that reflected most poorly on us.