How Freakazoids Teach Science

If you had any doubt that "teaching the controversy" means "telling whopping lies to captive children," doubt no more. PZ Myers:

Queensland is allowing fundamentalist Christians to teach religious instruction classes in the public schools — and, as we might have predicted, they are teaching nonsense.

Students have been told Noah collected dinosaur eggs to bring on the Ark, and Adam and Eve were not eaten by dinosaurs because they were under a protective spell.

Set Free Christian Church's Tim McKenzie said when students questioned him why dinosaur fossils carbon dated as earlier than man, he replied that the great flood must have skewed the data.

A parent of a Year 5 student on the Sunshine Coast said his daughter was ostracised to the library after arguing with her scripture teacher about DNA.

"The scripture teacher told the class that all people were descended from Adam and Eve," he said.

"My daughter rightly pointed out, as I had been teaching her about DNA and science, that 'wouldn't they all be inbred'?

"But the teacher replied that DNA wasn't invented then."

Creationists are crackpots and liars — they simply don't belong at all in positions of responsibility in the public schools, because they are going to intentionally miseducate. What do the education administrators in Queensland say? Why, that students can "opt out" of these classes. That isn't the issue, of course — why are the schools investing scarce resources to give religious extremists and lunatics a platform in the public schools at all?

I'll go further: any teacher who actually thinks creationist nonsense is true has no business ever stepping foot in a public school, even if she teaches PE. People who think Bronze Age myths are more true than 200 years of scientific discovery are not qualified for any job more intellectually challenging than cleaning toilets.

On second thought, anyone who thinks begging for help from an invisible sky wizard is an appropriate solution to any problem should not be entrusted with cleaning anything.