Report: $1 billion in taxpayer money went to anti-science private schools last year | The Raw Story

Report: $1 billion in taxpayer money went to anti-science private schools last year | The Raw Story:

Report: $1 billion in taxpayer money went to anti-science private schools last year

By Travis Gettys
Monday, March 24, 2014 10:38 EDT

Taxpayers are helping to pay for courses and textbooks that encourage students to mistrust science, mathematics, and the secular world itself – and those efforts seem likely to expand into other states.

Currently, taxpayers in 14 states funnel nearly $1 billion in private school tuition through voucher programs, paying those schools to teach children that Adam and Eve lived alongside dinosaurs less than 10,000 years ago in the Garden of Eden.

Politico reviewed hundreds of pages of course outlines, textbooks, and school website and reported Monday that many of these taxpayer-funded, faith-based schools portray science and mathematics as a web of lies.

Textbooks popular in Christian schools describe evolution as “a wicked and vain philosophy,” while students practice vocabulary lessons that claim “many scientists today are creationists.”

According to the report, schools often distort basic facts about the scientific method, set aside time during math lessons to explore numbers in the Bible, or teach that mathematics laws were ordained by God.

The schools make clear that religious instruction is a higher priority than academic learning, which students are taught to mistrust.

“Our understanding is not complete until we filter it through God’s Word,” one school assures