Failing the science test

Fundies can teach their kids to be dumber'n a bag o' hammers, or they can send 'em to college, but they can't do both, at least in the University of California system. They don't like this.

STUDENTS WHO HEAD OFF TO COLLEGE knowing nothing about evolution except that they shouldn't believe in it, and thinking that dinosaurs and people lived together, are not ready for university-level science courses. That is why the University of California is justified in rejecting a Christian school's creationism-based science course as college-prep material.

The course relies on textbooks that openly say they put religion before science. Yet Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murietta, along with a nationwide group of Christian schools, filed suit against the UC system, seeking to force its approval of this and other courses that baldly lack the required academic muscle.

It's one thing to supplement the teaching of science in private schools with religious beliefs, or to give arguments against evolution as well as for it. It's another to leave teenagers ignorant of the most basic scientific knowledge and still declare them fit for entry into a top mainstream university.

The six students in whose names the suit is filed are supposedly shocked that these courses aren't accepted by UC. But it's up to parents and students to pick coursework, both in private and public schools, that meets the requirements for UC admissions. People can teach and learn what they want on their own dime, but that doesn't give them the right to push publicly supported schools into doing the same.

They can be as dumb as they want, and raise their kids in their own image, but don't contaminate the smart kids and ask us to help pay for it. If they're stupid enough to believe this shit, they're plenty smart enough to go to some phony college like Bob Jones.