Florida must stop paying $1 billion a year to 'educate' children in fringe religious nonsense
Florida is using nearly $1 billion of your tax dollars to teach kids in voucher schools fake science and distorted history — all because uneducated charlatans have figured out how to intimidate state legislators.
Some of these schools — 80 percent describe themselves as “Christian” — use textbooks that claim people lived with dinosaurs. Heck, Noah had a couple in the ark. Some say God saved North America from Catholics and gave them South America instead. Others teach that slaves who “knew Christ” had “more freedom” than nonbelievers who weren’t captive. Babble. Just sheer babble.
The only reason these fringe “Christian schools” are getting away with sucking up millions in education funding is that Florida legislators are afraid of offending them. Elected types are so terrified of the instant howling about “Christians” being “persecuted” that they never seriously considered demanding the course of study in voucher schools meet the same standards taught in public schools. They’re just happy to buy votes with millions in cash. Your tax dollars.
Folks, these are neither real schools nor, scholars will argue, are they Christian. They’re just little money-making engines for benighted fraudsters whose only other chance at a paying job is the Sears hardware department.
Not all voucher schools act like science is just a different religion — some are excellent schools with deep community roots. But the Orlando Sentinel’s series “Schools Without Rules” revealed that other voucher schools hire high school dropouts and felons as teachers, and even one fellow criminally charged with inappropriately touching a student popped up in three different voucher schools.
Stop it right now. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that vouchers aren’t a violation of the First Amendment because they’re given to parents who then make the decision on where to educate their children. That doesn’t mean these schools should get away with teaching gibberish. They should meet the same curriculum requirements as every public school.
Tim Dees, director of Downey Christian School in east Orange County, where 90 percent of his 275 students rely on state scholarships to pay tuition, defended his school: “We believe our way is correct. We focus on creationism because that’s what we believe.”
No problem. Do fundamentalists want their kids to learn a bunch of hillbilly science? Handle venomous snakes? Learn that God looks down on Catholics, that America would still have slavery except “some power-hungry individuals stirred up the people”? Continue reading: Florida must stop paying $1 billion a year to 'educate' children in fringe religious nonsense - Orlando Sentinel
