Free schools to teach creationism

Everyday Champions Church set to be latest in line of faith-based founders

[Source TES here.]

An evangelical church, which intends to teach creationism as part of its science curriculum, has submitted a proposal to open a free school in Nottinghamshire.

The Everyday Champions Church in Newark handed its plans to open a 625-pupil secondary school in the area to the Department for Education last week.

The application came just a day before the DfE held its first free school conference, where education secretary Michael Gove said applications from creationist groups would be considered, with each judged on its individual merits.

According to the church, the Everyday Champions Academy will possess a “Christian ethos that permeates everything that happens throughout the school”.

The church states that it believes the Bible is an “accurate” depiction of God’s word, and that God is the “creator of all things”.

Continues at TES.

Here’s my view about the teaching of Young Earth Creationism in schools, from forthcoming book Belieiving Bullshit:

Young Earth Creationism has been, and continues to be, taught in schools. Often this is done covertly (I know of two British schools where Young Earth Creationism has been taught by a science teacher without the knowledge or permission of the school or other members of staff—and one was one of Britain’s leading independent schools). Obviously I object to Young Earth Creationism being taught in schools as a rival to orthodox scientific theories. People often object to the teaching of Young Earth Creationism on the grounds that children should not be taught ludicrous, obvious falsehoods. That’s not my main objection. My central criticism is this: teaching children that Young Earth Creationism is scientifically respectable involves teaching children to think like Dave. It involves getting them to think in ways that, under other circumstances, might justifiably lead us to suspect the thinker is suffering from some sort of mental illness. By allowing Young Earth Creationism into the classroom, we run not only the risk that children will end up believing ridiculous falsehoods, which is bad enough, but, worse still, that that they’ll end up supposing that the kind of warped and convoluted mental gymnastics in which Young Earth Creationists engage is actually cogent scientific thinking. We may end up corrupting not just what they think, but more importantly, how they think.