Creationism in Public Schools
Content
IDS 410
Creationism in Public Schools
Community Organizing on the Religious Right AnneMarie Dickey
Introduction and Thesis The traditional Christian view of the creation of the Heavens and the Earth in six literal days by God was taught in American schools from the founding of the Republic until early ear ly in the th
20 century. At that point, growing scientific confidence confidence in Darwins Theory of Evolution, where species compete and adapt over time through the process of natural selection, began to surface in public school instruction. Darwin posited that evolution was ultimately responsible for the development of humans from ape-like ancestors who had in turn evolved from another simian species and so on from placental mammals about 65 million years ago all al l the way back to the first invertebrates seen in Cambrian shale some 543 million years ago.
Backlash against Darwin and his published work On The Origin of Species has been constant and unremitting, unremitting, and reached a crescendo in the 1920s 1 920s with numerous attempts to 1
ban and criminalize the teaching of evolution in public schools. These efforts resulted in the 2
infamous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 in Tennessee . Although the event has been portrayed in popular media as a triumph for science, the trial had a serious chilling effect in instruction in evolution that was not reversed until the launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union U nion in 3
1957. This event galvanized politicians and teachers into action over a perceived science
1
Raymond A. Eve, Francis B. Harrold The Creationist Movement in Modern Modern America America (Boston Mass: Twayne Publishing, 1991) 16-20 2 3
Ibid 25-27 Ibid 28
education gap, and instruction in evolution, geology, engineering and physics all increased markedly.
Creationists have not been been dissuaded by any means, however. Many Christians sincerely believe that Darwins notion that impersonal and mechanistic natural forces have resulted in humanity is utterly incompatible with their interpretation of scripture and tradition where a loving, personal God created Man in His own image. The popular bumper sticker that that says: God said it. I believe it. That settles it! it! is an accurate accurate description of of the feelings of many people who find no comfort or meaning in natural science no matter how well we ll researched or voluminous the evidence. evidence. Judge Braswell Dean of Atlanta, Georgia, proclaimed proclaimed in 1981 This monkey mythology of Darwin is the cause of permissiveness, promiscuity, pills, prophylactics, perversions, abortions, pornography, pollution, poisoning, and proliferation of crimes of o f all 4
types. This reflects the widespread view that Darwinism (a term peculiar in use to American social and religious conservatives) is equivalent to atheism and therefore is corrosive to the moral and social order of America. America. This notion is fairly widespread in the conservative Christian community *
In reply to the perceived forces of secular science, many conservative Christians have organized through their churches, listened to lectures lect ures from purported Creation Scientists and fought for control of textbook textbook review boards and local school boards. Using these community organizing to control schools and textbooks is vital to Creationist Christians who are convinced
4
Ibid 94 *A term I will use to encompass a wide variety of socially conservative Christians including but not limited to evangelicals, Assembly of God and Pentecostal Christians, Charismatics, some conservative Lutherans and Episcopalians and also some conservative Catholic believers
that science has substituted a utilitarian, mechanistic history of the world in place of their conviction that that Mankind was created in Gods image and needs Gods gr grace ace for sin. By restoring Creationism its rightful place in school instruction, Creationists feel they can also restore America to her rightful place place with God. However, instead of building partnerships partnerships between parents of disparate backgrounds, schools and non governmental organizations in a constructive constructi ve engagement, creationist Christians have destructively partnered with politicians and well funded political action groups to make enemies of neighbors and demonize opponents in communities.
Creation Science and Intelligent Design 5
Creation Science started with a hydraulic engineer named Henry M. Morris. Having emerged from a period of spiritual introspection during the 1950s, Morris was a
determined Biblical literalist and creationist. creationist. After the launch of Sputnik and subsequent subsequent national panic, the federal government began funding the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study 6
or BSCS in order to improve and encourage quality science education in public schools. This was accomplished roughly around that same time that the federal government instituted the
5 6
Eve, Harrold The Creationist Movement 52 Movement 52 Ibid 28-29
7
Elementary and Secondary education Act, or ESEA. Morris and many others regarded this as an attempt to ram evolution down the throats of our children as well as an intrusion of the federal government into state affairs.
Therefore, in 1961 Morris and Old Testament scholar John C. Whitcomb published The Genesis Flood , which detailed the hypothesis that the entirety of the fossil bearing stratagraphic 8
record resulted from a single flood event described in the book of Genesis. They argued that simple sea floor organisms were logically the first things to be buried in the massive rush of sediments released by by erosion from rainfall. They were followed by fish and marine reptiles, and then the dinosaurs and mammals found higher on the stratagraphic record finally succumbed to the flood waters and mud. 9 This sort of interpretation of the geologic record is called catastrophism catastrophism,, since it mandates catastrophic events that were caused by a supernatural 10
being.
This is in direct opposition to the principle of uniformitarianism of uniformitarianism,, which posits that
geologic events take place gradually over very long periods of time and might summed up by 11
the phrase The present is the key to the past. (In other words, the slow physical processes observable today today are the same that operated in the distant past. This has been amended somewhat to include events like meteor impacts or other large scale events that happen rarely but can still have massive effects in a short period of time. This is known as Actualism as Actualism.) .)
7
Center for Community Change (2005). An organizers thumbnail sketch: Milestones in the history of public education, pp. 1-18. Washington, DC: Center for Community Change. 8 Ibid 52 9 Douglas J. Futuyama Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution ( NY: Pantheon Books, 1983) 15 10 11
Eve, Harrold The Creationist Movement 15-16 Movement 15-16 Ibid 16
The argument was easy to follow and appealed to horse sense in that it seems straightforward straightforwar d that the simple creatures on the seafloor s eafloor could not escape the Noachian flood debris at all while more mobile and sophisticated animals would escape their doom for a
lengthy period. However, it had no relation at all to geologic understandin understanding g of how sediment accumulates accumula tes and undergoes diagenesis (becomes (becomes rock). It also ignored the considerable diversity of depositional environments that the fossils were found in, which included desiccated playa lake bed shales with mud cracks; oxidized sandstones formed from desert sand dunes, near-shore quiet water marine marine shales and glacial tarn lake deposits. In some locales, single mapped units of of strata can be be over several kilometers thick. A trained geologist can work out a
sequence of events where sediment was deposited and in what kind of environment it happened. There is no mechanism known to science science by which a single flood could deposit miles upon miles of vertically measured sediments typical ty pical to many different environments, different environments, and the fossil record does not in any way suggest s uggest that Cambrian era trilobites cohabited with Pliocene mammals.
Morris and his readers were not discouraged discouraged at all. Creationists had a champion with a college education who was was willing to fight for them. In 1963, Morris, Duane Gish and several 12
other people founded the Creation Research Society (CRS). Unlike earlier creationists from the 1920s, the founders of the CRS were well educated and boast of five PhD biologists, a
12
Andrew Petto, Laurie Godfrey eds, Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism (NY: W.W. Norton and Co, 2007) 36
biochemist, an engineer with a doctorate, two members with masters degrees in biology and 13
one individual who pretended who pretended to to have a masters in geology.
The CRS promoted Young Earth Creationism, which held that the earth was only about 6,000 years old and that the Bible was a key document in interpreting interpreting the past. However, they wished to gain a measure of scientific respectability in order to promote these views in classrooms. Therefore, direct references to Biblical persons and events were stripped stripped from 14
their presentation of the geologic narrative. For the next two and a half decades, Creation Science and the CRS were at the forefront of promoting pro moting creationist views to American students and combating the perceived evil of Darwinism.
Intelligent Design is an offshoot of Creation Science that took hold in the late 1980s and early 1990s after the defeat of creationism in the Scopes II trial in LLittle ittle Rock, Arkansas (to be 15
discussed later) in 1982. Intelligent Design, orID, passed itself off as being more scholarly and respectable respectable then the Young Earth Creationism of Morris and Gish. ID does not spend time worrying about specific scriptural interpretations and Noachian Flood Geology as was the want of Morris and Gish. ID is satisfied to leave the creator somewhat anonymous, knowing knowing that the target audience knows knows just who is actually being invoked. The attacks on evolution rema remain in quite similar however, although although often more sophisticated in detail. Books like Darwins Black Box skeptically examine aspects of evolutionary microbiology without delving into Christian 16
apologetics. ID proponents often seize on the idea of irreducible irreducible complexity, which is the
13 14 15 16
Ibid 36 Ibid 36 Ibid 38 Ibid 50
notion that many animal or plant organs and processes are too complicated to have evolved and therefore must have been designed designed by an intelligent and omnipotent being. This meme has been debunked repeatedly and forcefully by researcher famed Stephan Gould and many
others, but it has a powerful grasp on popular imagination and it remains a useful tool for ID creationists.
The range of ID adherents is much more heterogeneous than the earlier Creationist movement. It covers the gamut from some Young Earth Earth Creationists to Old Earth Creatio Creationists nists (sometimes known as day-agers for believing that days in the Genesis account are metaphorical metaphoric al for long periods of time) to even a very few theo-evolutionists. However, even if the faces have changed, the the goals remain the same. ID retains the same desire to see evolution chased from public schools and from American scientific thought while replacing it with a theistic model of supernatural causation that cannot be even e ven be inquired about scientifically, since it invokes a Deus ex Machina. M achina.
A major center of the ID efforts in the 1990s and later is the Discovery Institute.
17
It was
founded in 1991 by an advisor to President Ronald Reagan named George Gilder, Gi lder, and attracted a number of creationist leaning biologists, b iologists, philosophers, lawyers and conservative 18
intelligentsia.
The Discovery Institute was focused on a number of Conservative concerns,
especially economic economic theory. However a branch to deal specifically with ID was formed. Known as the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, it was renamed the Center for Science
17 18
Petto, Godfrey Scientists Confront Intelligent Design 117 Ibid 117
and Culture in 2002 and thereafter just known as The Center.
19
The Center is the responsible
20
for the principle of The Wedge, which likens the destruction of evolutionary theory to that of splitting a log using a hammer and wedge with patience and perseverance.
The Evolution War: Methods and Mission The methods by which the CRS and like institutions operated in performing their mission consisted mostly of publications and textbooks that attempted to debunk evolution, and live speaking engagements engagements (notably Duane Duane Gish). The CRS et al did al did no actual research of their own to substantiate claims of supernatural catastrophism, and never attempted to publish any 21
papers in any peer reviewed journal. Instead, the CRS et al posited al posited that there were only two possibilities for how life happened on earth, and those could only be evolution or creation by God. If they could poke enough holes in evolution, then creation wins by by default and there is no need to actually try to prove anything about about it all. Indeed, the entire point of Creationism is to shut down research and debate on the origin of life li fe since the Bible already gives the answer up front. The heavy lifting of getting these ideas into schools was left to the various church congregationss of believers who would organize to congregation t o control school boards and vote sympathetic politicians into office.
Getting the word out to Christians in order to mobilize them was, and remains highly important to creationist creationist organizations. Christian radio talk shows like th the e influential Focus on the Family reach Family reach millions of listeners each week, and Dr James Dobson uses his platform to 19
Ibid 117
20 21
Ibid 112 Eve, Harrold The Creationist Movement 81 Movement 81
push for his conservative Christian culture war positions including cr creationism. eationism. The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) publishes newsletters, numerous books, a weekly radio show and a nd a variety of audio-visual classroom aids for creationist lectures.
22
The Center for Creation Studies,
based out of Jerry Falwells Liberty University, has been accredited by the State of Virginia to 23
train teachers in that state.
There are numerous publishers of creationist textbooks and home school courses of study from Bob Jones University and Apologia are widely disseminated among creationist 24
believing parents of home schooled children. The Discovery Institute, as mentioned, is a major center of the ID movement and is staffed by influential members of previous Republican presidential administrations and various academics. 25 It is well funded and has received rece ived a 1.5 million dollar private grant from the foundation of Howard Ahmanson who served on the board of the Chalcedon Institute founded by noted Christian Reconstructionist Rousas John 26
Rushdooney.
The Chalcedon Institute advocates the dismemberment of the Constitutional
government of the United States and the institution of a Christian dictatorship and the establishment of strict Mosaic Law, including the mandatory death penalty for homosexuality and public disobedience to parents.27
Lectures remain particularly popular and Duane Duane Gish from the CRS has been one of the most effective speakers for the creationist movement (Young Earth Creationism specifically).
22
Ibid 122 Ibid 124 24 Dylan Lovan Top Home-School Texts Dismiss Evolution For Creationism USA Today March 8, 2010 25 Petto,Godfrey Scientists Confront Intelligent Design 118 26 Ibid 118 23
27
Michelle Goldberg Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in America (NY: W.W. Norton and Co, 2006) 37
Public speaking appearances appearances energize believers in the cause at churches (or sometimes in colleges that host events in the name of academic freedom), and debates with scientists readily reveal to conservative Christians how their beliefs are different and far more doctrinally d octrinally sound
(to their way of thinking). Observers of the debate tactics of Mr. Gish reveal that he routinely plays to the audience as opposed to the scientists who debate him and who end up leaving the audience baffled and bored in the use of jargon jar gon and attention to detail that is beyond the understanding understand ing of a layperson.
28
Mr. Gish depends on this as he typically ty pically resorts to strawman
arguments (accusing scientists of supporting tenants of evolution theory that t hat have been long discarded or revised), appeals to authority (name dropping of a person respected by his target
audience), card stacking (highlighting information helpful to him and refusing to acknowledge or admit to information that damages his case), and glittering generalities (tying his argument 29
to a popular social value like family values or fairness)
The Center and The Wedge doctrine doctrine are the most recent arrivals on the stage. The wedge is a program to replace evolution with Intelligent Design as the primary scientific model 30
for lifes arrival on earth through a series of small steps.
Each step from 1) Evolution is a
theory in crisisto 2) Evolution and ID must be taught as equal in possibilityleads to 3) Intelligent Design is the only theory that is spiritually and intellectually satisfying and therefore evolution can be discarded along with Flat Earth beliefs and the worship of mythical Greek gods.
28
Eve, Harold The Creationist Movement 89 Movement 89
29 30
Ibid 89 Petto, Godfrey Scientists Confront Intelligent Design 112
The Evolution War: The Ground Game Having been provided the message and materials, creationist allies had the task of making something happen happen with what they were given. In the spirit of the saying All politics is local, creationists began the task of grass roots organizing through churches and around community school school boards in addition to state level legal strategies. Similar to the principles advocated by various community organizers, parents in school districts around the country for the last 40 years have been pooling their resources to advocate on behalf of a public education cause, although in this case it was due to their perceived pe rceived victimization in not having their cultural/religious beliefs beliefs affirmed in public classrooms. While organizing so sometimes metimes involving helping individual children and reforming single s ingle schools, organizing groups work toward changing the entire system for all children.
31
It is with this in mind that conservative Christian
parents and activists activists wish to change the science educatio education n of all American children. Instead of building partnerships in the community, however, the community organizing tended to set groups apart and in conflict rather then bring them together, while partnerships were built with national well heeled political interests who were pursuing an explicit conservative agenda.
One of the first attempts to gain control of public schools schools content started in 1963 when a Texas husband and wife names Mel and Norma Gabler became disgusted with the secular 32
humanism in public schools and began to monitor Texas textbooks and testify at Board of
31
M. Elena Lopez Transforming Schools Through Community Organizing: A Research Review Family Involvement
Network of Educators, Harvard Family Research Project www.finenetwork.org 32 Eve,Harrold The Creationist Movement 158 Movement 158
Education meetings.
33
In 1973, they became full time tim e Educational Research Analysts,
becoming well known as effective effective foes of evolution. They communicated with thou thousands sands of like minded Texans and were were able to arrange for creation science lecturers to come testify. They
scored an impressive victory in 1969 when Texas struck BSCS textbooks (see page 3) from 34
consideration.
In 1974, the Gablers scored again with a law that took their suggestion that
evolution cannot be referred to as a fact but only as a theory along with several other possibilities.
The enormity of the Texas textbook market was not lost in either side of the textbook debate. Texas and California wield wield vastly disproportionate power in how textbo textbooks oks are written because of their buying power leverage, and their decisions have serious consequences for other states. A state like Ohio may be forced to buy the Texas version of a text rather then pa pay y to have their own science books written to their own requirements. By 1987, it was becoming obvious to publishers that evolution was a lightning rod and they began to supply texts for consideration that that did not mention evolution at all al l or that used weasel phrases such as some 35
scientists think
Even with these modifications, creationists in Texas and elsewhere
continued to fight for explicit recognition of creationism in textbooks with battles to place creationists in control of Texas textbook selection continuing through the spring of 2011.
33
36
Ibid 158 Ibid 158 35 Ibid 162 36 M. Alex Johnson Creationism Controversy Again Slips Into Texas Textbook Debate July 21, 2011 http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_ http://usnews.msnb c.msn.com/_news/2011/ news/2011/07/21/71 07/21/7135995-creationis 35995-creationism-controversy-a m-controversy-again-slips-into-texasgain-slips-into-texastextbook-debate?chromedomain=fieldnotes 34
In
1995, Alabama began to enclose disclaimers in biology textbooks on the controversy of 37
38
evolution. Similar stickers were attached to biology b iology textbooks in Georgia.
The textbook war in West Virginia became the real thing when the wife of a fundamentalist fundamenta list minister entered the creationist textbook debate in 1974. 39 Alice Moore, a resident of Kanawha County, objected to 175 books on various subjects that had been approved for the school district. district. She had been elected to the school board four years previously in a campaign to rid the schools of sex education. education. Her objections to the nearly two hundred books included included adjectives such as filthy, trashy, disgusting, one sidedly in favor of 40
blacks, and unpatriotic. Despite protests and threats to withhold children for school, the board approved the the books on June 27, 1974. Protesting parents picketed city and schoo schooll buses rd
as well as local mines starting on September 3 , 1974. Miners refused to cross picket lines lines and effectively went on strike (probably due to sympathy with the issue as well as union rules 41
forbidding crossing a picket line).
The schools closed for three days and the books were temporarily withdrawn, but violence escalated with dynamite and firebomb attacks on schools and sniper fire directed at police officers and school buses. buses. The County Board of Education Education building was blown up by dynamite. A mayor of a local town had the school superintendent superintendent and two school board 42
members arrested for contributing to the delinquency of minors. Eventually, the violence
37
Petto ,Godfrey Scientists Confront Intelligent Design 40 Goldberg Kingdom Coming 101 39 Eve, Harrold The Creationist Movement 95 Movement 95 40 Ibid 95 41 Ibid 96 42 Ibid 96 38
subsided as a number of private Christian schools were created which effectively removed 43
the more militant parents from the public schools.
This episode reveals not only the degree of o f violence associated with cultural grievance on the conservative end of the political spectrum, but also the degree to which fellow travellers or like minded believers can act in i n concert towards a cultural goal even without overall leadership. It is unlikely that there was anybody in charge directing terrorist attacks o on n county property, property, police officers and children on buses. However, there were enough p people eople willing to take those actions on their own initiative that serious se rious disruption to the political and educational education al process occurred.
The community organization in Kanawha County, such as it was, was not concerned with improving low performing schools or improving accountability accountability as was the case with the Austin Interfaith community organizing efforts
44
st
in the first decade of the 21 century, nor was it 45
concerned with improving parent involvement through building social power and growing 46
teachers or improving health care for children.
47
It was about affirming traditional religious
mores, and highlighting how those values were different and superior to those supposedly being promulgated in the textbooks and by influences outside of the community. This is how culture war grievance works in the context of community organizing, since the organizing concentrates concentra tes on expelling e xpelling and eliminating unwanted influences while circling c ircling around a 43
Ibid 96 Kavitha Mediratta, Seema Shah, Sara McAlister Building Partnerships to Reinvent School Culture Culture Annenberg Annenberg Institute For School Reform At Brown University , May 2009 45 Lopez Transforming Schools 46 Kavitha Mediratta, Seema Shah, Sara McAlister Community organizing for stronger schools: Strategies and successes. (Cambridge, MA: MA: Harvard Education Press. 210) 102-104 47 Mark Warren Communities and Schools: A New View of Urban Education Reform Harvard Educational Review ; Summer, 2005; 75, 2; Research Library
44
cherished set of beliefs. beliefs. Culture/religious grievance based based organizing is inherently inherently divisive and even destructive, since it presumes a triumphalist outcome that must must exclude exclude anybody who is not a true believer. In this respect, the community organizing organizing itself was an anarchic event that
was meant to disrupt and even physically destroy (or kill, considering that gunfire was directed at police and children) opposition, in addition to the instance of sympathetic sy mpathetic community community leaders abusing abusing their legal offices to harass and hinder members of the school board. It succeeded, and the message of barely restrained violence on the political right remains relevant in an age of Tea Party signs that proclaim We came unarmedthis time!
Most fights over creationism and evolution certainly do not involve sniper fire and blowing up county county buildings, even if the passions and rhetoric remain heated. It must also be noted that most efforts to instill creationist viewpoints in classrooms involve disciplined and well funded organizations that bring talent and money in from outside in order to get a result. The Arkansas law mandating balanced treatment of creationism and evolution evo lution was carefully shepherded between between ministers and politicians before going to a vote. Reverend Blount of the Sylvan Hills Community Church collaborated with State Senator James Holsted in writing the bill proposal.48 The Greater Little Rock Evangelical Fellowship Community then joined in a lobbying l obbying campaign along with an obscure advocacy group called FLAG (Family Life, America and a nd God). 49
The bill passed both houses overwhelmingly and was signed into law on 19 March, 1981.
This sort of church/politician/ church/politician/ deep pocketed Astroturf advocacy group asse assemblage mblage was a template for other creationist creationist legal gambits in the future. Although the law was
48 49
Eve, Harrold The Creationist Movement 148 Movement 148 Ibid 149
successfully challenged by the ACLU and a plethora of allies and stricken by the court, creationists had learned how to work with allies and get their laws on the books, however 50
fleetingly. (Dealing with Godless black robed tyrants is another pet passion of many
conservative Christians Christians who wish to see courts neutered and unable to interfere in future plans) However, future attempts would be made with Intelligent Design as a rallying cry, even ev en if the tactics and group dynamics remained similar.
This model was seen on a smaller scale with the 2004 school board fight over ID in Dover, Pennsylvania. It started with a normal request for new biology textbooks for the high school, and the standard Biology Biology by by Kenneth Miller and Joseph Devine was requested.
51
A new
school board member named Bill Buckingham objected on the grounds that the book promoted Darwinism. Other school board members members were blindsided, although warning signs from other states had been growing that creationists had not given up after the defeat in Arkansas in the 80s. Creationists had tried to eliminate all mentions of of evolution in Kansas state curriculum in 1999 after getting a majority.
52
Legislators in Missouri were reported to be
crafting a bill mandating that a chapter of alternative theories of creation must be included in biology texts in 2004. It was against this backdrop backdrop that the residents of Dover found themselves pitted against one another in a vitriolic campaign for culture war values. 53
The textbook selected by the creationists in Dover was called Of Pandas and People. The copyright is held by The Foundation F oundation for Thought and Ethics, which is helmed by a
50
Ibid 149 Goldberg Kingdom Coming 80 52 Ibid 81 53 Ibid 88
51
minister and former staff member of Campus Crusade for Christ named John Buell.
54
The
Foundation for Thought and Ethics Ethics academic editor, William Dembski, is also a senior fellow at 55
the Discovery Institute (see page 6) in the Center for Science and Culture (CSC). The board
initially deadlocked over purchase of the text, but on October 18, 2004, Buckingham got the vote he wanted after personally pe rsonally attacking the patriotism and religious convictions of holdout board members, as well as raising funds from his church c hurch to buy the texts and put them in the library if all else failed. The vote passed 6 to 3 in favor of teaching teaching ID in Dover Dover classrooms. Two board members, Casey and Jeff Brown, immediately resigned in protest and were replaced by hard-line creationist supporters, one was a man who w ho homeschooled his children rather then
place them in public schools and the the other was an Evangelical pastor. The Browns were roundl roundly y insulted with profanities by Buckingham as they left, along with the remaining holdout Noel 56
Wenrich who was cursed to his face in the meeting.
The religious/culture war aspects were unavoidable to the Browns who were passed condemnatory condemnator y notes in restaurants by wait staff and mailed mai led various tracts by strangers.
57
The
monetary aspects of defending the textbook purchase in court were worrisome to many residents however, even if they were pleased with seeing their cultural beliefs upheld. upheld. A group of parents represented by the ACLU had filed suit against the district and the district did not have the money to deal with a lawsuit, especially when they would have to pay the ACLU fees if they lost. Instead of building community community relationships and strengthening bonds, bonds, the creationist effort was tearing the town apart as People stopped speaking and crossed one another off 54
Ibid 90 Ibid 90 56 Ibid 91 57 Ibid 91 55
their Christmas card lists.
58
The premise was on social division and showing how one set of
beliefs was moral, Godly and patriotic while anyone who disagreed by definition had none of those qualities. Scarce wonder that that instead of building community resources, the effort
squandered them gleefully to show fidelity to its beliefs. Predictably, the school board was defeated in court after the plaintiffs showed that the text Of Pandas and People had been revised specifically word for word to remove words like l ike creation and creationist creationist and and replace them the phrase intelligent design, design, which made a mockery of the religious neutrality of the book.
59
Although the district was represent pro represent pro bono by the
Thomas More Law center (a conservative Catholic firm that describes itself as the sword and shield for people of faith. Current GOP presidential candida candidate te and former Pennsylvania 60
senator Rick Santorum is on the advisory board) , the district was still on the hook for the ACLU fees and tens of thousands of dollars in deposition fees and lost time for district employees. Seeing the writing on the wall, the CSC (Center for f or the Renewal of Science and Culture) chose 61
not to get involved and called for choice rather mandates on content.
The linkage between
churches, politicians and outsider money was again in play, although the outsiders ran with their money when the legal case started looking looking dicey. The community paid for a case the school board foolishly brought for no reason other then vanity and grievance, and the community was left in tatters.
58
Ibid 100 Petto Godfrey Scientists Confront Intelligent Design 98 60 Goldberg Kingdom Coming 100 61 Ibid 100 59
One additional avenue that has been assiduously pursued by creationists is the school voucher/charter voucher/char ter school trend that has developed since the 80s. First proposed by famed libertarian economist Milton Friedman and championed by Ronald Ro nald Reagan, the concept 62
involves using public school monies to support privately run schools.
With vouchers, students
would have the ability to use tax dollars to pay to go to a private school of their choice and escape failing schools, while charter schools are private schools run under the auspices of the school board. Either way, it was proposed as a free market alternative to the statism deplored by Freidman. Of course, such a thing had already been don done e in the white segregationist academies all through the Old South, although African American students were 63
not invited. Creationist Christians already already heavily trend towards free market theory as a solution to perceived government failures and have enthusiastically e nthusiastically embraced both charter schools and vouchers. Minnesota congresswoman and and GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann was 64
forced off of the board of a charter school that she co-founded after parents became alarmed 65
at her insistence on hard line Christian activism in school curriculum, curriculum, including creationism. According to New Yorker correspondent correspondent Ryan Lizza, They signed a charter saying they were not allowed in any way to include a religious rel igious agenda at this school and they very quickly violated that and built the school around a Christian sectarian agenda to the point where parents ... became very alarmedThe school district stepped in and warned them that they 62
Diane Ravitch The Death and Life of the Great American School System School System (NY: Basic Books, 2010) 115-117 Ibid 116 64 NPR The Books and Beliefs Shaping Michele Bachmann http://www.npr.org/2011/08/09/139084313/thebooks-and-beliefs-shaping-michele-bachmann 65 Dana Goldstein The GOPs New War on Schools Slate Slate,, August 17, 2011 http://www.slate.com/articles/doub http://www.slate. com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/ le_x/doublex/2011/08/the_gops_new_wa 08/the_gops_new_war_on_schools.html r_on_schools.html 63
were going to lose their charter, and eventually Bachmann and another person who were 66
spearheading spearheadin g this were forced off the board and forced off the leadership of that school."
By 2009, it was becoming apparent that school choice was not a silver bullet for improving standardized test scores after a Stanford University study analyzed 2,403 charter c harter 67
schools from 15 states and Washington DC. This did not quell the enthusiasm to use school choice and tax payer monies as a means to send children to schools that teach creationism. Milton Friedman would would likely approve, since this gets to the heart of fr free ee market theory. If parents wish to give their children a poor education, education, then that is their right. This view is championed by conservative (and wealthy) school privatization advocate Betsy Prince Devos who has funded her own school s chool choice organization called (somewhat predictably) the 68
American Federation for Children. Children . Mrs. Devos is the sister of Eric Prince, Pr ince, founder of the now infamous Blackwater Blackwater armed armed contractor company company and she is married to Dick DeVos, a cofounder of Amway.
69
In a manner strikingly similar to the pattern seen earlier in public school
creationist battles, DeVos has partnered with state governors such as Wisconsins Scott Walker and Pennsylvanias Tom Corbett in order to induce local entities into taking her charitable funding as a means of furthering her political objectives. 70
66
NPR The Books and Beliefs Shaping Michele Bachmann Rayvitch American Rayvitch American School System 142 68 Rachel Tabachnick Vouchers/Tax Vouchers/Tax Credits Funding Creationism. R Revisionist evisionist History, Hostility toward Other Religions May 25, 2011, K-12NN News Network http://www.k12news http://www.k12newsnetwork.com/20 network.com/2011/05/voucher 11/05/voucherstax-creditsstax-credits funding-creationism-revisionist-history-h funding-creationism-re visionist-history-hostility-toward-othe ostility-toward-other-religions/ r-religions/ 69 Rachel Tabachnick The DeVos Family: Meet The Super Wealthy Right Wingers Working With the Religious Right to Kill Public Education E ducation May 6, 2011 2011 Alternet Alternet http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/15 http://www.alternet .org/teaparty/150868/the_dev 0868/the_devos_family_meet_t os_family_meet_the_superwealthy_r he_superwealthy_rightwingers_working_w ightwingers_working_wit it h_the_religious_right_to_kill_public_educatio h_the_religious_ri ght_to_kill_public_education?page=entire n?page=entire 70 Tabachnick Vouchers/Tax Credits 67
The texts used by Christian schools accepting vouchers are familiar to anybody who has seen what creationist Christians Christians use in home schooling. A 2003 study by Francis Patterson looked at schools receiving receiving public funding in Florida, particularly near Orlando. Over 90% of the schools used creationist creationist science texts in biology published from three major sources: Bob Jones University, ACE and A Beka.
71
All three sources approach biology and geology from a creationist
perspective and take a conservative and even harsh view on many social and racial issues, including criticism of the landmark Brown V. Board Supreme Court Decision and gay rights as well as outlier views on American history. Parents may not be giving their children a quality education with rigorous attention to accuracy, accuracy, but their right to pay tributary paens to Miltons free market will apparently not be questioned.
Conclusion The opacity of conservative Christian grassroots school organizing is entirely deliberate and is designed to frustrate frustrate outside observers. The plethora of seeming grassroots grassroots entities with exciting names and attractive websites website s almost always front for wealthy corporate and private donors with specific political goals in mind. Often, the address ends of being a post office box that is shared with several other similar conservative dummy political action committees. What is undeniable is that these entities wor work k closely with conservative politicians
71
Ibid
at the state and local level as well wel l as church leaders who guide their congregations into the desired plan of action. The action is top down instead of botto bottom m up.
This sort of model came as a surprise to Democratic campaign workers in Ohio during the Kerry campaign in 2004. Kerry volunteers and staffers saw no sign of GOP door knocker knockerss walking the neighborhoods neighborhoods to get their voters. Nobody from the the GOP was putting up signs. It came as a shock to the campaign when Ohio went resoundingly for Bush, but it should not n ot have.
72
The GOP campaign was hiding in plain sightin mega churches where pastors engaged
in weekly conference calls to strategize with their political leadership in Washington and 73
financier concern groups like the Family Research Council.
It becomes a machine every bit as
effective as Tammany Hall was several generations ago, and with national reach.
This machine is what comes knocking on the doors of states like Arkansas and small towns like Dover with the message that Godless statism is corrupting their children and that they are under constant attack from secular science, the media and the courts. courts. Even if the
creationists change their names, call something Intelligent Design and creatively edit their textbooks, the divisive nature nature of their organizing remains a constant. It is meant to divide a community and make enemies of neighbors over religion, since promoting a theme of being under attack by by secularist forces is very good at motivating the grassroots. It is therefore necessary to take a cultural belief and turn it into a weapon of culture war for use in American schools.
72 73
Goldberg Kingdom Coming 52 Ibid 59
The progressive goal of strengthening schools and communities through grassroots collective action is viewed with deep suspicion and even contempt by conservatives, especially since empowering people at the bottom of the social order (and especially people of color) is viewed as a form of socialism. The top-down organizatio organizational nal model used by conservative power brokers specifically resists grassroots control (Tea Party organizations were quickly co-opted by Washington veterans veterans like Dick Armey). The objective is to motivate religious conservatives towards a goal of substituting science and empiricism with supernatural beliefs and Biblical inerrancy in the public schools. schools. The damage to community resources, relationship relationshipss and the education of Americas children are secondary considerations.
Bibliogaphy Center for Community Change (2005). An organizers thumbnail sketch: Milestones in the history of public education, pp. 1-18. Washington, DC: Center for Community Change. Eve, Raymond A; Harrold, Francis Francis B The Creationist Movement in Modern Modern America America (Boston Mass: Twayne Publishing, 1991) Futuyama, Douglas J Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution ( NY: Pantheon Books, 1983) Goldberg, Michelle Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism Nationalism in America (NY: W.W. Norton and Co, 2006) Goldstein, Dana The GOPs New War on Schools Slate Slate,, August 17, 2011 http://www.slate.com/articles/d ouble_x/doublex/2011/08/the_gops_new_war_on_sch e_gops_new_war_on_schools.ht ools.ht http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/08/th ml ml Johnson, M Alex Creationism Controversy Controversy Again Slips Into Texas Textbook Debate July 21, 11/07/21/7135995-creationism-controversynism-controversy2011 http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/20 http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/07/21/7135995-creatio again-slips-into-texas-textbook-deb again-slips-into -texas-textbook-debate?chromedomain=fi ate?chromedomain=fieldnotes eldnotes Lopez , M Elena Transforming Schools Through Community Organizing: A Research Review Family Involvement Network of Educators, Harvard Family Research Project www.finenetwork.org www.finenetwork.org Lovan, Dylan Top Home-School Texts Dismiss Evolution For Creationism USA Today March 8, 2010 Mediratta, Kavitha; Shah, Seema; McAlister, McAlister, Sara Community organizing for stronger schools: Strategies and successes. successes. (Cambridge, MA: MA: Harvard Education Press. 210) 102-104 Mediratta, Kavitha; Shah, Seema; McAlister, McAlister, Sara Building Partnerships Partnerships to Reinvent School Culture Annenberg Culture Annenberg Institute For School Reform At Brown University , May 2009 NPR The Books and Beliefs Shaping Michele Bachmann http://www.n http://www.npr.org/2011/08/09/1390843 pr.org/2011/08/09/139084313/the-books-and 13/the-books-and-beliefs-shaping-michele-beliefs-shaping-michelebachmann bachmann Petto, Andrew; Godfrey, Laurie eds, Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism (NY: W.W. Norton and Co, 2007) Ravitch, Diane The Death and Life of the Great American School System School System (NY: Basic Books, 2010)
Tabachnick, Rachel The DeVos Family: Meet The Super Wealthy Right Wingers Working With Tabachnick, the Religious Right to Kill Public Pu blic Education May 6, 2011 Alternet 2011 Alternet
http://www.alte http://www.alternet.or rnet.org/teaparty/ g/teaparty/150868/the_dev 150868/the_devos_family_meet_the_s os_family_meet_the_superwealthy_r uperwealthy_rightwi ightwi ngers_working_with_the_religious_r ngers_working_wit h_the_religious_right_to_kill_public_educa ight_to_kill_public_education?page=en tion?page=entire tire Tabachnick, Rachel Vouchers/Tax Credits Tabachnick, Credits Funding Creationism. Revisionist History, History, Hostility toward Other Religions May 25, 2011, K-12NN News Network http://www.k12newsnetwork.com/ http://www.k12newsnetwor k.com/2011/05/voucher 2011/05/voucherstax-creditsstax-credits-funding-creationism funding-creationism-revisionist-history-hostility-tow revisionisthistory-hostility-toward-other-reli ard-other-religions/ gions/ Warren, Mark Communities and Schools: A New View of Urban Education Reform Harvard Educational Review ; Summer, 2005; 75, 2; Research Library
