In his The Greatest Show on Earth Richard Dawkins wrote about the Christian insanity and the Christian thugs that American biology teachers have to deal with.
The plight of many science teachers today is not less dire. When they attempt to expound the central and guiding principle of biology; when they honestly place the living world in its historical context -- which means evolution; when they explore and explain the very nature of life itself, they are harried and stymied, hassled and bullied, even threatened with loss of their jobs. At the very least their time is wasted at every turn. They are likely to receive menacing letters from parents, and have to endure the sarcastic smirks and close-folded arms of brainwashed children. They are supplied with state-approved textbooks that have had the word 'evolution' systematically expunged, or bowdlerized into 'change over time'.
In October 2008 a group of about sixty American high-school teachers met at the Center for Science Education of Emory University, in Atlanta. Some of the horror stories they had to tell deserve wide attention. One teacher reported that students 'burst into tears' when told they would be studying evolution. Another teacher described how students repeatedly screamed 'No!' when he began talking about evolution in class. Another reported that pupils demanded to know why they had to learn about evolution, given that it was 'only a theory'. Yet another teacher described how 'churches train students to come to school with specific questions to ask to sabotage my lessons'.
There seems to be developing evidence that the US has reached its apex and that with the rise of China, it's all down hill from now on. The xians and the muzzies will have played an influential role in that undesirable outcome. It's extremely bad news. The US has been responsible for much of what makes the world a modern place. From far away Australia, it's hard to comprehend how such a successful and accompolished nation can so seriously "run off the rails". Sad for the world in general and sad for freedom, rational thought and science.
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