Holy crap!

Nice article on a 19-year-old science activist in Louisiana over on i09.

How 19-year-old activist Zack Kopplin is making life hell for Louisiana’s creationists

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 of his teachers began to not just supplement existing texts, but to rid the classroom of established science books altogether...

The moneyquote of the article (as far as I'm concerned) is:

After a story came out about a school in the Louisiana voucher program teaching that the Loch Ness Monster was real and disproved evolution, Kopplin looked deeper into the program and found that this wasn't just one school, but at least 19 other schools, too.

So of course I had to follow the links to the article concerning what was in those 'replacement' textbooks. (Because how could I not?) There are some... uh... just read some of this stuff.

"Some scientists speculate that Noah took small or baby dinosaurs on the Ark.... are dinosaurs still alive today?" With photographs and testimonies of those who claimed to have seen one...

Also:

- "Only ten percent of Africans can read or write..."

- "the [Ku Klux] Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross..."

- "God used the 'Trail of Tears' to bring many Indians to Christ."

- the Great Depression was exaggerated by propagandists, including John Steinbeck, to advance a socialist agenda.

- Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential win was due to an imaginary economic crisis created by the media.

- "The greatest struggle of all time, the Battle of Armageddon, will occur in the Middle East when Christ returns..."