Christian Leftist

Never mind that the purpose of school is to educate, not indoctrinate. Never mind that it is illegal to endorse a religion in a public classom. A punch of bigots concerned citizens in New York City are protesting what they call a “Madrassa” : a public school that teaches required courses in Arabic language and culture.

Keep in mind that their are 70 other multilingual/cultural PUBLIC schools in New York city alone, and NONE of them have fallen under criticism this ridiculous. There are blos popping up claiming that CNN has slanted the story in favor of the school, etc., blah, blah, all of the usual right-wing lies and distortions. The former principal had to resign because she defended the word intifada on a T-shirt. NOTE: I said the WORD ‘intifada,’ not what some extremists have twisted it to mean.

You can watch the clip yourself and see what you think.
Arabic School Controversy

Last week, the Bethel Park H.S. administration decided to expel one of its students after someone reported an airsoft gun in the trunk of his car. That’s right,: not in the school; in the trunk of his CAR.

Airsoft guns shoot plastic BBs. They are painful if you get hit on bare skin, but they rarely cause seriously injury outside of freak accidents and random bouts of idiocy by people whose parents never should have allowed them slingshots, much less air-powered toy weapons.

It’s the height of idiocy to kick out a kid because of an after-school hobby. The details aren’t important as long as he didn’t shoot at anyone in the school.

My brother owns a ton of airsoft guns and plays with them all of the time. He’s also one of the best-behaved, non-violent people you will ever meet. I can only imagine what a stink the local chapter of the ACLU could make of this case if it tried. Doesn’t the board have better things to do than to comb through cars in a parking lot looking for reasons to punish its students?

Yes, you heard me correctly: those crazy Kansans are going to make a comeback – unless you want to do something about it. I don’t mean on their state school board, where voters ousted them from power in 2006 after they redefined the meaning of the word ’science.’ I mean on the National Association of State Boards of Education, where Kenneth R. Willard, a Republican who voted with the Kansas school board’s conservative (read maximalist zealous anti-evolution) majority in 2005 to teach intelligent design in the classroom, is poised to take the helm. The New York Times article politely describes intelligent design as “an ideological cousin of creationism.” Yessir.
This is one of those stories that will fly under the radar of most Americans because it’s a nonprofit group and not a nomination that involves heads of state like Bush or Gonzales. But this is exactly the plan of the extreme right wing maximalists: to slowly win local and state elections that have lasting influence on the education of future voters and to slowly worm their way into the very fabric of rational society that they seek to destroy.
Mr. Willard is an insurance executive from Hutchinson, KS. (Great, I dislike him even more now.) He retained his seat even when voters kicked out many of his peers for subscribing to the same ‘beliefs’ as he did. As president-elect of the NASBE, he will take office in January of 2009.
As stated on the national nonprofit group’s website at www.nasbe.org, the organization’s purpose is to work to “strengthen state leadership in educational policymaking.” Read: instead of being able to control a state’s direction in teaching science, one of the creationists will now be able to influence all school boards on a national level.
Mr Willard’s sole opponent withdrew from the race for personal reasons after the nominating period had ended, which made it impossible for another state board member to win a nomination and compete against Willard. Each state has one vote in the election. Scientists who oppose Willard’s views are urging state school boards to write-in a different candidate in the hope that one or other names will actually receive more votes than the intelligent design advocate. Last November, a retired businessman named Sam Schloemer won a seat on the Ohio school board when scientists organized to defeat creationist candidates there. He is the first nominee mentioned as a possible write-in candidate.
When asked, Willard said he believes that the teaching of evolution and/or opposing theories is best left up to individual states, but he admitted to his opinion that alternatives to evolution like intelligent design should have a place in science classrooms. Of course, the conclusion that one can draw from this is that while evolutionary debates have so far stayed within the confines of state school boards, with Mr. Willard’s appointment to a national school board leadership position, that will change dramatically.
In other words, there is still time to influence the votes of the individual states on this, and I bet plenty state boards are none too happy about the Kansan’s stance on evolution. But they will need to reach a consensus on one alternative to Willard in order to be able to defeat him, and that means we need to act by contacting them NOW.
I’ll quote the New York Times article on the subject in closing, because it says in two sentences what a frightening number of American citizens have yet to accept:
“There is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution as an explanation for the complexity and diversity of life on Earth. Courts have repeatedly ruled that creationism and intelligent design are religious doctrines, not scientific theories.”
Period.