12 Aug 2012
14 Wacky 'Facts' Kids Will Learn in Louisiana's Voucher Schools

This is a collection of quotes from textbooks used by schools that will receive taxpayer subsidies (commonly known as vouchers) in Louisiana. Most are the usual sort of pap you'll find coming from the religious right - anti-gay and anti-abortion with a healthy dose of wrong headed historical revisionism. The lit book even takes the time to swipe at Mart Twain and Emily Dickinson.

But what really got me was #11:

Abstract algebra is too dang complicated: "Unlike the 'modern math' theorists, who believe that mathematics is a creation of man and thus arbitrary and relative, A Beka Book teaches that the laws of mathematics are a creation of God and thus absolute…A Beka Book provides attractive, legible, and workable traditional mathematics texts that are not burdened with modern theories such as set theory."—ABeka.com

Wow. Just wow. Hope none of these kids are planning a career in engineering...

Thanks to a new law privatizing public education in Louisiana, Bible-based curriculum can now indoctrinate young, pliant minds with the good news of the Lord—all on the state taxpayers' dime.

(link) [Mother Jones]

Update: BoingBoing has a wonderful explainer up on this - What do Christian fundamentalists have against set theory?

22:42 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link