Just when you think you’re making it up
As you may know, the novel I have coming out next year deals with the fight over teaching evolution in a high school.
Some people have asked me if the kind of discussions that go on in the classroom in my book really happen still in the real world.
As of this week, yes. Read the whole article if you feel like getting chills (teacher telling his students why they will be going to hell, etc.), but here’s just a sample:
Paszkiewicz shot down the theories of evolution and the “Big Bang” in favor of creationism. He also told his class that dinosaurs were on Noah’s ark.
Um, no. Sure hope those kids are getting input from someplace else, or we can’t be looking to them to become the doctors and scientists we need in the future to cure those diseases we haven’t even heard of yet. Am I the only person who gets nervous–not to mention outraged–reading about teachers like this? And this school isn’t in some backwater–BJ tells me it’s about four miles from midtown Manhatten as the crow flies.
Thanks to BJ for the link.
Technorati Tags: Evolution, Creationism, Religion, Science, Darwinism, Intelligent Design
November 24th, 2006 at 10:49 am
The fact that this goes on doesn’t surprise me. The fact that the kid had to tape it before anyone believed him does.
Then again, my partner teaches a class in a public high school, and he says that he never bought that scene in Buffy where the pricipal goes on an on about how happy he is to expel Buffy, until he saw a teacher practically dancing a jig when an expelled student had to turn in her books, and making all kinds of sadistically gleeful comments about how she knew the kid would never amount to anything.
November 24th, 2006 at 11:36 am
It’s easy to forget that teachers are petty human beings just like the rest of us.