There is an article today in the Sun Sentinel that starts out with this paragraph:
The Palm Beach County School Board is battling claims it fails to teach evolution and so-called truths about religions, charges hurled in a lawsuit from two students and their rabbi/attorney/father.
Unfortunately, the article is considered “premium content” at the newspaper’s site, which means access to it is limited. So, I’ll summarize it as best as I can. A lawsuit was filed against the Palm Beach County School Board two years ago. It was initially a complaint about relaxed rules for adopting textbooks, which the plaintiffs felt would be an open invitation to “increasing the danger of extremist and religious ideologies spreading into classrooms.” The lawsuit was dismissed multiple times.
Since then, the original plaintiffs are no longer involved in the case but their lawyer is. Barry Silver has replaced those plaintiff with his own student sons. And the lawsuit has morphed into a more general complaint that evolution is not being properly taught and that anytime religion is brought up in the classroom, in the context of terrorist attacks, it’s portrayed as always being peaceful and never bad.
The lawsuit is on hold right now by order of the judge as Silver and the School Board work out a possible compromise settlement.
Silver’s main complaint about evolution is:
The Silvers also challenged a fifth-grade science textbook, which cites adaptation and the effect of environmental changes on organisms, “yet never mentions Charles Darwin, evolution or natural selection.”
“Such a grave oversight,” the suit states, “would be akin to discussing the founding of the United States without mentioning the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, or discussing the most popular sports in America, without using the words “baseball,” “football” or “basketball.”
Stay tuned.
Of the four 7th grade teachers at my Pasco County Middle School, I was the only one that finished the 2012-2013 academic year teaching evolution. No one else “got to it”.
The Rabbi Barry Silver is a pretty funny guy. (from the article) One of his battles has been fighting the establishment over the rights of thong-wearing hot dog vendors. Ya gotta wonder if the good Rabbi is really reading the Torah. “It is not right for children to be deprived of learning about the greatest scientific discovery of all time due to narrow-minded religious views,” I wonder what the greatest scientific discovery of all time just might be?
Chris said “I wonder what the greatest scientific discovery of all time just might be?”
Well why don’t you tell us Chris? I can’t wait to read your opinion, being a expert in science that you are.
O my, too many to list from flush toilets to DNA. Where would thong-wearing hot dog vendors fit on your imaginary sketch of common ancestry?
Where would thong-wearing hot dog vendors fit on your imaginary sketch of common ancestry?
Oh, I would think somewhere slightly below Neanderthal, but way above Bible Literalists.
As a self accessed descendent of a randomly evolved imaginary ape like creature, what would you think Silver’s greatest scientific discovery of all time would be?
Chris,
It’s hard for me to consider what Barry Silvers intellectual view point would be, particularly when his thought processes have been corrupted by Bronze Age superstitions. However, if I would hazard a guess for the good Rabbi, I would think it would be when the Israelites discovered that iron was more powerful than Yahweh. “And the Lord was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.â€â€”Judges 1:19
Ivorygirl,
You could be right, wrong conclusions are your specialty.