Pretty Bad When the Russians are Laughing Their Ass Off Over Texas' 'Billies

Evolution as the root cause of Holocaust: Texas version

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When Texas parents sent their kids to iSchool High, charter school in Houston, they were expecting some great college preparation. Instead, their children came home with apparently religiously motivated anti-science books. A publicly funded charter high school in Texas is teaching students with the textbook that implies the Holocaust has roots in the theory of evolution.

According to Salon.com, iSchool High is using a textbook that links Charles Darwin's scientific theory to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler:

[Hitler] has written that the Aryan (German) race would be the leader in all human progress. To accomplish that goal, all “lower races” should either be enslaved or eliminated. Apparently the theory of evolution and its “survival of the fittest” philosophy had taken root in Hitler’s warped mind.

So some worried parents researched ResponsiveEd, the curriculum used at iSchool High. What they discovered was that ResponsiveEd was founded by Donald R. Howard, former owner of ACE (Accelerated Christian Education). ACE is a fundamentalist education group that teaches young-Earth creationism as fact and integrates Bible lessons into every academic subject.

Last year it hit headlines because one of its high school science books taught that the Loch Ness Monster was real, and that this was evidence against evolution. After Howard left ACE in the 1990s, he founded Eagle Project charter schools, which became Responsive Education Solutions, or ResponsiveEd, in 2007.

Howard told the Wall Street Journal in 1998: “Take the Ten Commandments ­– you can rework those as a success principle by rewording them. We will call it truth, we will call it principles, we will call it values. We will not call it religion.”

ResponsiveEd is the latest in a long line of concerns raised over the religious affiliations of charter schools. In 2010, more than 20 percent of Texas charter schools reportedly had a religious affiliation. And ResponsiveEd aims to expand further, adding that it has 60 schools in Texas, with plans to open another 20 by 2014. It also has facilities in Arkansas, and intends to open in Indiana.

Charter schools receive public funding but operate privately. While promoting creationist science is deemed unconstitutional in public schools, charter schools enjoy greater freedom to challenge mainstream science in the classroom.

Some charter schools has their curriculum based on Accelerated Christian Education’s Paradigm Accelerated Curriculum (PAC). It was designed by former ACE vice president Ronald E. Johnson. While ACE is an “individualized, accelerated” curriculum based on the “five laws of learning,” PAC is an “accelerated individualized” curriculum based on the “six principles of learning.” Like ACE and ResponsiveEd, it questions the theory of evolution and presents the “catastrophist theory” of Noah’s Ark as a credible rival explanation. Positing that the earth is only 6,000 years old (because the oldest living things on earth are less than 5,000 years old), this pseudoscientific theory is easily disproved-- by 4000 BC, human cultures were flourishing throughout the world, agriculture and animal domestication were thousands of years old and the biblical city of Jericho had been inhabited for more than 5,000 years already.

Like ResponsiveEd, PAC teaches that the theory of evolution influenced Hitler to create the Third Reich. It also relies on the traditional creationist argument of “gaps” in the fossil record:

Evolutionists insist that their theory must be right and that missing fossil evidence is merely the result of a flawed fossil record; the catastrophists insist that evolutionists have not exercised the scientific method of discovery and therefore have little real scientific evidence to prove their theory.

The PAC materials in general try to undermine the authority of science by all means.

ResponsiveEd’s teaching on evolution promises that students will, among other things:

· Explain the difference between microevolution and macroevolution.

· Describe the theories concerning the origins of life.

· Discuss theories of human development.

· Express opinions regarding evolutionary theory in general and human evolution in particular.

· Describe controversies regarding evolution.

This resembles John Hudson Tiner’s “When Science Fails,” an Accelerated Christian Education literature book that uses various examples to undermine science and cast doubt on the theory of evolution.

By questioning the science, the evolution challengers in Texas are following a strategy increasingly deployed by others around the country.

If textbooks do not present alternative viewpoints or explain what they describe as “the controversy,” they say students will be deprived of a core concept of education — learning how to make up their own minds.

However, ACE’s educational techniques have faced much criticism. Harry Brighouse, professor of philosophy and affiliate professor of educational policy studies at University of Wisconsin, Madison, described ACE’s social studies as “a kind of Christian version of the Stalinist approach to history but without the intellectual subtlety.”

The harshest criticism came from a 1987 article in the Phi Delta Kappan that stated:

If parents want their children to obtain a very limited and sometimes inaccurate view of the world – one that ignores thinking above the level of rote recall – then the ACE materials do the job very well. The world of the ACE materials is quite a different one from that of scholarship and critical thinking.

Critics claim there are dangers in allowing pseudoscience and fundamentalist fallacies to be taught in American schools. Scientifically disprovable theories already bear fruits: nearly half of Americans surveyed by Gallup last year said they believe 'God' created modern human beings sometime in the past 10,000 years.

Meanwhile, US Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), a medical doctor and member of the House Science Committee, calls evolution a "lie from the pit of hell" and believes the earth is only 9,000 years old.

For citizens in Texas, however, the concern remains that public funds are being allocated to schools that teach religiously motivated lessons.

Texas will soon be able to select biology textbooks for use by high school students over the next decade, but the panel responsible for reviewing submissions from publishers has stirred controversy because a number of its members do not accept evolution and climate change as scientific truth, NYT reports.

Texas governor Rick Perry boasted that his schools taught both creationism and evolution while the State Board of Education includes members who hold creationist views. Six of them are known to reject evolution.

“Utterly unqualified partisan politicians will look at what utterly unqualified citizens have said about a textbook and decide whether it meets the requirements of a textbook,” NYT cited Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, which monitors the activities of far-right organizations.

Publishers including well-known companies like Pearson, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and McGraw-Hill have already submitted 14 biology textbooks for consideration this year. The state board will vote on a final list of textbooks in November. Even though Texas districts can make their own decisions, many will simply choose books from the state’s approved list, activists fear.

Some Texans worry that ideologically driven review panel members and state school board members are slowly eroding science education in the state, NYT says. Parents are also concerned that their children will not be able to compete for jobs that require scientific backgrounds.

Olga Yazhgunovich
Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/2013_10_28/Evolution-as-the-root-cause-of-Holocaust-Texas-version-2144/