Assault of the irrational: Texas and teaching the "controversy"

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Texas Public Schools: Still Teaching Creationism
"In Texas public schools, children learn that the Bible provides scientific proof that Earth is 6,000 years old, that the origins of racial diversity trace back to a curse placed on Noah's son, and that astronauts have discovered "a day missing in space" that corroborates biblical stories of the sun standing still."

Thus foundeth Reading, Writing & Religion II, a report by the Texas Freedom Network. Apparently, many Texan pupils are being taught the myths of Creationism, including Young Earth creationism (i.e. the world is 6000 years old, etc).

Of course, first reaction to this is: "Well, this is Texas after all. Does any of this surprise you at all?" Now, to be clear: there are lots of good, honest, decent, reasonable people in Texas. Lots of them. Meanwhile, there are quite a few who are ignorant, dogmatic and close-minded as well - just like in any other place. I'm not going to delve into speculations about how prevalent one or the other are. That said, I guess each of us could figure out for themselves which of the two segments is practically running the place right now, no? I'm willing to bet the Bible literalists actually constitute a not-so-significant portion of the entire population, but just as it seems to have happened on Capitol Hill, society at large has somehow allowed a very vocal, very well-organized and very determined fringe group to hijack the discourse, and exert disproportionate influence on the entire process of shaping the future generations. Which is kind of unfortunate, because it creates a generation of scientifically illiterate people who then become tomorrow's hamburger flippers, a human mass that's easy to govern and be lead by the nose. To deliberately deform entire segments of the population in such a way and severely cripple their career and life opportunities, is basically a form of child abuse in my book, sorry for the hysterically sounding hyperbole.

( But, but... what about free speech?!? )