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Creationist Science Teachers
By Paul Hsieh @ 5:41 PM   
According to New Scientist, 16% of US science teachers are creationists. The following data is from a 2007 random survey of nearly 2000 US high school science teachers:When Berkman's team asked about the teachers' personal beliefs, about the same number, 16% of the total, said they believed human beings had been created by God within the last 10,000 years. And what do science teachers actually teach in the classroom?Despite a court-ordered ban on the teaching of creationism in US schools, about one in eight high-school biology teachers still teach it as valid science, a survey reveals. And, although almost all teachers also taught evolution, those with less training in science – and especially evolutionary biology – tend to devote less class time to Darwinian principles.
...[A] quarter of the teachers also reported spending at least some time teaching about creationism or intelligent design. Of these, 48% – about 12.5% of the total survey – said they taught it as a "valid, scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species". I find it deeply disturbing that an American child's only formal exposure to one of the fundamental principle of modern biological science may come from a government school teacher who is willing to let his own personal religious beliefs bias his portrayal of the facts.
As some have correctly noted, "intelligent design" is just religion in disguise. This is yet another reason that parents should oppose mandatory government schooling for their children.Labels: Education, Religion
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