Just Can’t COPE: Kan. Anti-Evolution Group Loses Second Challenge to Science Curriculum Standards
COPE’s claims are nothing if not novel. In its original suit, the group complained that the standards, which have been adopted by 26 states, encourage teachers to take children “into the religious sphere by leading them to ask ultimate religious questions like what is the cause and nature of life and the universe – ‘where do we come from?’”Continued COPE, “The purpose of the indoctrination is to establish the religious Worldview, not to deliver to an age appropriate audience an objective and religiously neutral origins science education that seeks to inform.”COPE also seems to believe that because the standards teach students that evolution is fact – something, by the way, that mainstream scientists do not doubt – Kansas schoolchildren will be subtly manipulated into rejecting their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.It’s a nonsensical argument, which is why courts have unanimously rejected it. But the group’s been nothing if not persistent, and despite its legal losses, it seems unlikely to surrender its crusade.
Sound science education isn’t the only cause in COPE’s sights.The group also objects to what it characterizes as “progressive” content in Common Core, national social studies standards and Advanced Placement U.S. History curriculum. On its website, COPE claims that schools once taught American exceptionalism and Judeo-Christian religion, only to now turn to “darker subjects” like “victimization, oppression, racism, sexism, bigotry, feminism, secularism, separation of church and state, multiculturalism, activist environmentalism, social justice, and wealth redistribution.”
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