Louisiana Wants to Give Taxpayer Money to Schools That Teach the Following ‘Facts’

We already know Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal‘s voucher program would give upwards of $11,000,000 to religious schools that teach complete nonsense. But what would those schools teach?

Mother Jones‘ Deanna Pan has a list of “14 Wacky ‘Facts’ Kids Will Learn in Louisiana’s Voucher Schools.” It’s exactly as messed up as you would expect… and I’m even ignoring all the Creationism stuff:

4. Africa needs religion: “Africa is a continent with many needs. It is still in need of the gospel… Only about ten percent of Africans can read and write. In some areas the mission schools have been shut down by Communists who have taken over the government.” — Old World History and Geography in Christian Perspective, 3rd ed., A Beka Book, 2004

…

8. SCOTUS enslaved fetuses: “Ignoring 3,500 years of Judeo-Christian civilization, religion, morality, and law, the Burger Court held that an unborn child was not a living person but rather the ‘property’ of the mother (much like slaves were considered property in the 1857 case of Dred Scott v. Sandford).” — American Government in Christian Perspective, 2nd ed., A Beka Book, 1997

…

11. Abstract algebra is too dang complicated: “Unlike the ‘modern math’ theorists, who believe that mathematics is a creation of man and thus arbitrary and relative, A Beka Book teaches that the laws of mathematics are a creation of God and thus absolute… A Beka Book provides attractive, legible, and workable traditional mathematics texts that are not burdened with modern theories such as set theory.” — ABeka.com

Boing Boing’s Maggie Koerth-Baker explores that last one much further here.

I feel horrible for these children… they’re going to be laughingstocks of the colleges they won’t be able to get into in the first place.

(Thanks to Richard for the link!)

Tainda

I gasped at most of those and read it with my mouth hanging open lol

This one really got me though “God used the Trail of Tears to bring many Indians to Christ”

One of my good friends is a blinded Christian. I mentioned one time about the forced conversion of a lot of native people in different countries. She said “yeah, Christians held a gun to people’s heads and made them believe” and then she laughed. She honestly believes no one was every forced to believe in the Christian god.
trekkie_disq

they will get into college, because the same people that legislated this, will legislate the standards that the louisiana universities use.
3lemenope

Well, set theory was the domain of that damned atheist Russell. If kids read about set theory and Google, they may run into “Why I Am Not a Christian” and we can’t have that!
Nick Lowe

They’ll be able to get into Bob Jones University just fine…
Jeff P

All we need is 2 things: weading, wighting, and awithmatic
Jeremy Mullins

“not burdened with modern theories such as set theory.”

I don’t want to live on this planet anymore…
Mick Wright

Can’t help but wonder if the dissing of set theory comes from the point where it mixes separate (but equal) colours…
Rich Wilson

Nah, they weren’t forced to believe.

They were just forced to profess belief.

Edit: What’s up with Disqus forcing a newline for tags? Wonder if it does it on bold too. Nope, guess it’s just the <i> tag.
rlrose63

Okay, I read the entire list on that site and am literally sick to my stomach. I hope more and more colleges deny entry to students from these schools as they are completely ill equipped to learn higher math and science and the brainwashing they are receiving regarding American history is criminal.

Gays = child molesters. Maths are too complicated and “set theory” is wrong. The Klan was just a big group of good guys. The Great Depression was exagerated?! Fetuses = slaves to the mother???

My head hurts.
rlrose63

I have a close friend (whom I love dearly) who goes on yearly “missions” with her evangelical church (not Mormon). They send ahead of their visit cases of bibles and bible study materials. She feels completely justified in giving the bibles, along with food and assistance building homes and schools. I asked her one time if they could just go down and do the building and providing WITHOUT the religious materials. She was confused and could not conceive of that option. Yeah, it made me sad.
Tainda

It makes me sad too.

Just yesterday this friend and I got into an argument because she was making fun of Mormons “A man coming out of the sky with sacred underwear? COME ON!” I tried to tell her how ridiculous that sounded coming from a Christian. She finally got mad and said “You’re right! I’m wrong! Let’s move on!”
3lemenope

I think the EM tag still works properly.
rlrose63

OMG, I’ve had that same conversation with my Christian friends! There is a HUGE Mormon population here where I live (Pacific Northwest), so we all have Mormon friends as well. While my Mormon friends have NEVER scoffed at the Christian friends, I can’t say the same vice versa. It is astounding to me how the Christian ladies can’t see how silly they sound when they mock the Mormons because to me, it’s ALL ridiculous.
0xabad1dea

I was raised on these textbooks, AMA.

I indeed did not get accepted to any state pubic schools in Virginia despite a good GPA and really SAT scores.

Here’s a gem: One of the history books (an Abeka one iirc, high school level) denounced the book Emile (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emile,_or_On_Education) as being guided by the hand of Satan to twist and corrupt children away from the faith. This little diatribe backfired spectacularly as I was really curious why it said so and downloaded the ebook over dialup that night and spent about six hours reading it and finding it really interesting and non-satanic.
Sue Blue

Can we just quarantine Louisiana? Maybe the zombie mind virus will burn itself out when they all drown in their own drool or bleed out from the stumps of their fingers from all that knuckledragging. I’m all for encouraging immediate secession.

I know not all Lousianians are this stupid or are in favor of Jindal’s Christian toadying, but come on – enough is enough. Move out or lose out.
Tainda

Why are we friends with them again? hahaha

I live in Missouri and we have a big population of Mormons here too. The small town I live in actually has a Joseph Smith statue.

Scary though it seems, I was baptized RLDS lol
RobMcCune

A Beka Book provides attractive, legible, and workable traditional mathematics texts that are not burdened with modern theories such as set theory.

Oh come on christians, why don’t you brag about the book stating pi is exactly 3. Or how complex numbers are too complicated for your god who is beyond human understanding. This defiant stupidity perfectly characterizes conservative christianity, it would be hilarious if it wasn’t being taught to children.
RobMcCune

They also teach math without homosexual greek geometry or terrorist islamic algebra.
Onamission5

Well if the apparent goal is not to get kids into real colleges and universities but to make it so that the only higher education they will be qualified to receive comes from bible college, so that the religious right can flail about over how prejudiced them liberal learning centers are against bible believing christians, then I’d say job well done.
Stev84

I’ve heard it before, but I finally found some to explain why they object to that:

http://boingboing.net/2012/08/07/what-do-christian-fundamentali.html
Dma

5000 whining atheists vs the Great Prophet

http://fstdt.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=rp&action=display&thread=10864
3lemenope

The real trick will be in forgoing the Arabic numerals entirely. Quick, what’s MDCCLVIII divided by IX? And you can’t use zero when showing your work, that’s a heathen Chinese/Indian contribution.
Cincinatheist

Well, it is just a theory.

*ducks*
Ken

The skeptic in me questions the reality of this. The realist in me knows its time to start job hunting overseas.
NewAtheist

as if I wasn’t disquieted enough by what they’re proposing to mind-fuck these kids with, you had to add that little gem…
rlrose63

Haha… I adore my friend. I know we’d both do anything for the other and she rarely discusses her faith with me one way or the other. Other than the missions she goes on, she’s pretty low-key.

Did you grow up RLDS or what? How did you escape?
Blacksheep

Not satanic but certainly not female friendly, as Rousseau wrote that women should be “passive and weak,” “put up little resistance” and are “made specially to please man.”

My dislike of the book was more from stuff like this:

“…the best social institutions are those that best know how to denature man, to take his absolute existence from him in order to give him a relative one and transport the I into the common unity.”

Frankly I’m surprised they banned it!
Tainda

I’m the same way with my friend. Other than her crazy religious beliefs we fit together perfectly.

I grew up RLDS by going to church with my grandma. My parents don’t go to church. The older I got the more I realized it was BS lol
Rich Wilson

Serves me right. I shouldn’t be using deprecated tags anyway. Old habits die hard.
0xabad1dea

I do definitely remember that it was about *boys* and *men* and otherwise had some unfortunate signs-of-the-times but as a 15yo I was definitely very very confused that someone would consider this book so incredibly infernal and malicious as to specifically call it out in a history textbook as being a deliberate middle finger in the face of God. The part I most vividly remember is sinister advice like keeping a vegetable garden with your children and encouraging them not to be afraid of spiders.
Piet

Well.. the word algebra is of Arabic origin.
Wikipedia: al-jebr meaning “reunion of broken parts”
So, it is clearly a islamic conspiracy, probably been going on for centuries.
Randy Bobandy

Why bother…. they can just get a diploma from a paper mill, it is worth about as much.