Nineteen-year-old activist makes life hell for creationists

[doggie]

Good for him Glad to see someone standing up for their legal rights.

http://io9.com/5976112/how-19+year+old- ... eationists

For Zack Kopplin, it all started back in 2008 with the passing of the Louisiana Science Education Act. The bill made it considerably easier for teachers to introduce creationist textbooks into the classroom. Outraged, he wrote a research paper about it for a high school English class. Nearly five years later, the 19-year-old Kopplin has become one of the fiercest — and most feared — advocates for education reform in Louisiana. We recently spoke to him to learn more about how he's making a difference.

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. It was during the process to adopt a new life science textbook in 2010 that creationists barraged Louisiana's State Board of Education with complaints about the evidence-based science texts. Suddenly, it appeared that they were going to be successful in throwing out science textbooks.

[Mela99]

This kid is epic. He would make one hell of a lawyer/lobbyist.

[laura oz]

I think I have a new hero. Seriously, I went to a Christian school where we were told to dismiss the carbon dating in our science books because as the teacher said "we know the dating can not be accurate because God made the world and one day to God could be a thousand years or a few hours to us". You can imagine the looks and reactions I got when I went to nursing school at a real college and was taking history and other classes :oops: :? . Oh, and one of our teachers' husband was a teacher at a public school in our area and was constantly getting arrested for teaching creationism and the whole school thought that was just wonderful :roll: Guess it was good to be a martyr in the early 90's. Whatever.

[AuntCloud]

I teach science. My Master's thesis is on evolution. I had the good fortune to work with some amazing evolutionary scientists. I applaud this young man and do whatever I can, whenever I can, to disseminate as much information on evolution.

That said, I'm all for people's right to believe in whatever medieval fuckery they want to believe in; only they have to live by the technology available at that time. If you have the mindset of an ignoramus, you have to eschew the use of tools made by wiser people.

[merrily]

some of the comments underneath the article are downright depressing.

[Jana814]

This kid is epic. He would make one hell of a lawyer/lobbyist.

Agree!