Texas District adopts fundamentalist bible curriculum.A Texas public school district has garnered nationwide attention for adopting a controversial and constitutionally suspect course on the Bible. In late December, the board of trustees board of trustees Politics The posse of thugs who oversee an institution's administration. See Board of directors. for the Ector County Independent School District Ector County Independent School District is a public school district based in Odessa, Texas (USA). In addition to Odessa, the district also serves the communities of West Odessa, Gardendale, and Goldsmith as well as rural areas in Ector County. voted 4-2 to adopt the course created by the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools The National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (NCBCPS) is a nonprofit organization that promotes the use of its 300-page Bible curriculum, The Bible in History and Literature, in schools throughout the United States. (NCBCPS NCBCPS National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (Greensboro, NC) ). The NCBCPS, which is supported by an increasing number of powerful Religious Right groups, claims that the curriculum is used in hundreds of school districts nationwide, though it refuses to name those districts. The board also voted about a month before to dump the school district's sex education course, which included discussion of contraception. Last summer, the Texas Freedom Network (TFN), an organization that counters the Religious Right, released a study of the course by a scholar at Southern Methodist University Southern Methodist University, at Dallas, Tex.; United Methodist; coeducational; chartered 1911. The school's facilities include laboratories for electron microscopy and stable isotopes, a museum of paleontology, and a graduate research center. . Professor Mark A. Chancey concluded that the NCBCPS course was riddled with shoddy research and promoted religion. The school board vote came on the same day that a federal district court in Pennsylvania ruled against teaching religion in science classes in Dover, Pa. TFN officials said that the court ruling is a sign of what may happen in Ector County. "For those who don't know how this story will end, the federal judge in the Dover case provided a preview, "said TFN President Kathy Miller. |
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