From Bookslut's 2004 list of book-banning attempts:
Horses, by Juliet Clutton Brook. A parent of an eight-year-old student at Smith Elementary School in Helena, MT, challenged the presence of Clutton-Brock's book about horses in the school's library because it supported the theory of evolution....
2 comments:
Pablo @ 3:40PM | 2006-09-28| permalink
And how much freedom of thought or freedom to pursue science is there in any elementary school? In most of them, kids are required to pledge allegience (or "pwej awegience" as they say when they don't know either of those words) or be expelled. I believe that in Louisiana, they made it a law that a student could be required to say sir or ma'am.
Are there ANY controversies about teachers teaching hard-hitting science like
* Moderate drinking has repeatedly been shown to extend life expectency.
* H*m*s*xuality is found in the animal kingdom, and more intelligent and more social species have greater incidences of it.
The reasons these controversies don't exist in schools is that no teacher would dare even bring them up. So ironically it may be a good thing that some parent is complaining. It means that someone somewhere felt free enough to give them something to complain about.
****
In an interesting aside about freedom of thought, I had to repost this comment and take out some of the vowels in that one word above because enetations wouldn't permit me to post this comment while using that word.
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Felix @ 4:21PM | 2006-09-29| permalink
*Sigh*
I guess this means I need to accelerate the Enetation-dumping project.
A followup to the "Horse" story, posted to the Project Wombat listserv:
Associated Press State & Local Wire, 1 March 2004:
"A woman who wants "Horse" removed from her 8-year-old's school
because it promotes evolution had only one supporter and dozens of opponents
at a hearing by a school district committee.
Roxanne Cleasby wants the Helena School District to remove the book,
or at least Pages 8 and 9, from Smith Elementary, because it does not address
creationism as an alternative theory to evolution.
The committee will submit its recommendation to the superintendent of
public schools within 30 days.
"It took about 55 million years for the present family of horses,
asses and zebras to evolve from their earliest horse-like ancestor," reads
Page 8 of the children's book by Juliet Clutton-Brock.
Cleasby said there is no evidence that the horse, as a species,
actually evolved. She devoted most of her allotted three minutes to disputing
the theory of evolution.
"There remain too many questions with evolutionary theory to present
it as a fact," she said. "Children and adults need the freedom to question,
ponder and seek this very fundamental question of how they came to be."
John Fenlason of the Hannaford Street Bible Church in Helena also said the
book should not present evolution as a fact.
"Evolution is just as much a theory and a religious view as
creationism is," Fenlason said. "I don't think creationism gets equal
opportunity to be discussed. Let's give both sides that opportunity."
When the moderator turned the discussion over to supporters of the
book, the line stretched to the back of the room. Some called Cleasby's
complaint an "attack by extremists" on public schools and nothing more than
"religious dogma.""
Pablo @ 12:09PM | 2006-09-27| permalink
I'm surprized spiraling health care costs (and poor quality) didn't drag US competitiveness down further. The cost for health insurance for a family in the US is now around $11,000 a year with health care inflation expected to be over 7% per year in the foreseeable future.
We're number 40!
We're number 40!
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Felix @ 1:25PM | 2006-09-28| permalink
Woo hoo!
Weren't there some recent studies showing that Americans' overall level of health had dropped below that of Brits, Canadians, etc., even while costs continued to spiral upward?
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Pablo @ 3:14PM | 2006-09-28| permalink
It wouldn't surprise me, but I don't know of that particular study. Of course, one big problem is lifestyle choices - bad diets, no exercise. It's hard to factor out those variables and get pure health care delivery
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