Only closed minds wanted

Hat tip to JackLewis.net for bringing to our attention that in Government schools the motto apparently is Only closed minds wanted.


An Atlanta judge has ruled that open mindedness, careful study and critical consideration are religious practices and therefore have no place in taxpayer funded schools.

Judge Clarence Cooper ruled against the Cobb County School District in January, ordering the immediate removal of all stickers. However, the school district appealed the decision, seeking a hold on the removal until the appeal is heard. Judge Cooper’s latest ruling will allow the stickers to remain throughout the school term, minimizing the disruption of classes.

While Judge Cooper acknowledged that the stickers clearly served a ‘secular purpose’, an “observer may interpret the sticker to convey a message of endorsement of religion.”

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to rule on the appeal by the end of the year.

CNN said "Due to the manner in which the sticker refers to evolution as a theory, the sticker also has the effect of undermining evolution education to the benefit of those Cobb County citizens who would prefer that students maintain their religious beliefs regarding the origin of life," Cooper wrote in his ruling.

Cooper said he was ruling on the "narrow issue" of the case, brought against the Cobb County School District and Board of Education by four parents of district students, was whether the district's stickers violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

His conclusion, he said, "is not that the school board should not have called evolution a theory or that the school board should have called evolution a fact."

"Rather, the distinction of evolution as a theory rather than a fact is the distinction that religiously motivated individuals have specifically asked school boards to make in the most recent anti-evolution movement, and that was exactly what parents in Cobb County did in this case," he wrote.

"By adopting this specific language, even if at the direction of counsel, the Cobb County School Board appears to have sided with these religiously motivated individuals."

The sticker, he said, sends "a message that the school board agrees with the beliefs of Christian fundamentalists and creationists."

"The school board has effectively improperly entangled itself with religion by appearing to take a position," Cooper wrote. "Therefore, the sticker must be removed from all of the textbooks into which it has been placed." .....

According to the AP, the schools placed the stickers after more than 2,000 parents complained the textbooks presented evolution as fact, without mentioning rival ideas about the beginnings of life.

What? The First Amendment provides Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

It does not say "Government can't appear to take a position indicating it agrees with religiously motivated individuals."

There were many different stickers, and the one used depended on what was said in the textbook to which it was attached. See this page to see the stickers.