"Rev Dr" Lenny Flank
Posts: 2560 Joined: Feb. 2005
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I posted this on t.o this past summer. I'm re-posting it because I think the creationist loss in Georgia and their soon-to-be loss in Pennsylvania has increased its relevance and made it even more necessary that we begin taking the fight TO the creationists.
Over on another email list, I am having a discussion about a proposal of mine for an anti-creationist campaign that will, I think, cut away the creationist support in local school districts and will, I think, pound the final nail into their coffin.
My proposal is this:
Most states in the US have, in the past years, either srengthened or added in their state curriculum standards a requirement that evolution be taught as a part of a good science education. While some states have very strong detailed standards and others have brief ambiguous ones, the fact remaisn that they have decided that evolution is an important part of biology and must be taught as part of any good science education.
Creationist, on the other hand, have still been able to intimidate many local schools into dropping mention of evolution as "too controversial", and this local base of support is the only thing holding the creationists up right now.
So I propose we kill it.
I propose we find a state which has very strong detailed standards requiring evolution, find a district within that state which is NOT teaching evolution (either because the local school board "doesn't believe in it" or because they "don't want to offend parents" or because the subject is "too controversial"), and then sue them on the grounds that they are not meeting the state's educational standards and are therefore, by the state's own definition, providing a sub-standard science education to its students.
Here is why I think it's a good tactic to take:
(1) we can't lose. The district has no defense to offer ---- they must meet the state standards, and they are not. Case closed.
(2) It will accomplish what we all have said for years that we want -- it will get evolution into all our schools and textbooks, and it will make it impossible for creationists to intimidate or pressure anyone into keeping it out.
(3) it will establish the legal precedent that evolution is standard part of any good science education and that any school which does not teach evolution (for whatever reason) is not meeting its obligation to teach good science
(4) it will negate the fundie's power in local school board elections by making those elections irrelevant to the issue -- state school standards apply to every school in the state, and those districts MUST comply, no matter WHAT their local school board wants to do. Even if the fundies capture the entire local school board and they ALL vote to drop evolution, they can't do it -- they *must* comply with the state education standards.
(5) Winning in one district will establish the legal precedent, and force every school district in the state to comply. It will also send the message to all the other districts in other states, sicne they will all be equally vulnerable to such a lawsuit. At that point, the fundies will have a choice; they can either choose to contest us in each and every state, which will lead into a long drawn out legal fight for them which will drain their resources and disrupt their own plans, all for a fight that they cannot possibly win anyway; or they can choose to not waste their resources and to cede the field to us, giving up their influence in local districts. Either choice makes me happy. We win either way, they lose either way.
(6) such a strategy disrupts the fundies' coherent national strategy. For too long, the fundies have been calling all the shots, free to pick and choose fights when and where they want, and the anti-creationist movement has just been following behind them, reacting to what they do. It's time we stop being defensive with them and go on the attack, forcing them to react to *us*.
As I noted before, the fundies are in retreat everywhere. The local school board is their last remaining power base. So let's take that power base away from them.
Whaddya think?
-------------- Editor, Red and Black Publishers www.RedandBlackPublishers.com
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