Hattix

Here in Britain, the Government has no direct say over education. An organisation of professional teachers, educators, experts, define the national curriculum which all students are tested against. There are caveats, many I do not like, such as that government funding goes to religious schools which is a horrendous abuse of taxpayer money to merely further a non-educational aganda.

My readers in the States are not so lucky. It seems that most states have a Board of Education, elected to place based on how well they can campaign and many of them aren’t even educators by trade but career politicians using it as a stepping stone. The perfect platform from which to launch a war on education.

In Texas, Don McLeroy heads their BoE and is perhaps the least qualified person to do so. He’s devoutly anti-education, a Young-Earth Creationist and most likely a Flat-Earther. This is a man who thinks that reality is taught in The Bible, The Koran, The Torah, The Talmund… A man who wants mythology to take the place of reality in the classroom.

It should come as no surprise then, that his latest exploits managed to perk the attention of this usually UK-centric blog (I’m getting there, I promise!). In three years, a panel of experts, teachers and educators were revising the English curriculum for Texas. This work of 36 months was then totally ignored and a small insular group of ’social conservatives’ wrote a new one up right there and then, according to their own beliefs and agendas. Politicians, not educators, not teachers, invented a new curriculum with little to no educator or teacher backing overnight.

It doesn’t stop there. This trainwreck carried on through the BoE, McLeroy actually dismissed members who raised concerns that he was rushing through and denied counter-arguments to be made. 9-6, the new ’standards’ were forced past.

Now you may be wondering, what do a bunch of foreigners who decide they don’t want to teach English have to do with us? Well first off, it’s the invasion of education being led by the religious right. They want to indoctrinate children early and often; Science (oh boy, this’ll make for some fun posts) is next on the agenda.

Most importantly this tells us all what damage religion can do when allowed into education. These are people who don’t privately live their own lives according to whatever book they worship, but want to force that onto other people, onto their innocent children. Does this seem evil? Only something that distant foreigners would do? It’s happening here and now in the UK! Already the government, free to sponsor whatever schools it likes, funds Christian, Muslim, Jewish schools who have a very tenuous grasp of reality and teach their dogma as science! To make matters worse, that dogma is then forced through examinations under anti-discriminaton laws.

In the UK we taxpayers do not just pay for religions we may not agree with, but we subvert the worth of our childrens’ education. Is “Allah did it” as valid an education as a thorough understanding of Genetics and Evolution? The Government wants you to think it is and it’s made laws to make sure it is. Your child, busting his nut to learn his Science, gains the exact same grade as a student at some church school who writes “because my god said so”.

It must end. Religion has its place, but that place is not in any publically funded sector. Public funds must not be used to forward any religious agenda. Let us not continue making the mistakes that our backwards American cousins are making today. Let’s prove that we can do it better.