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Sunday, January 20, 2013

Activist Zack Kopplin is making life hell for Louisiana’s creationists | toteachornototeach

Activist Zack Kopplin is making life hell for Louisiana’s creationists | toteachornototeach:


Activist Zack Kopplin is making life hell for Louisiana’s creationists

adam-and-eve-e1305127512133How 19-year-old activist Zack Kopplin
is making life hell for Louisiana’s creationists


by George Dvorsky
For Zack Kopplin, it all started back in 2008 with the passing of the Louisiana Science Education Act. The bill made it considerably easier for teachers to introduce creationist textbooks into the classroom. Outraged, he wrote a research paper about it for a high school English class. Nearly five years later, the 19-year-old Kopplin has become one of the fiercest — and most feared — advocates for education reform in Louisiana. We recently spoke to him to learn more about how he’s making a difference.
Kopplin, who is studying history at Rice University, had good reason to be upset after the passing of the LSEA — an insidious piece of legislation that allows teachers to bring in their own supplemental materials when discussing politically controversial topics like evolution or climate change. Soon after the act was passed, some