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The teacher added this fill-in-the-blank question to a science test: “ "ISN'T IT AMAZING WHAT THE _____________ HAS MADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" C.C. didn’t know that the answer Roark wanted was “Lord.”

While the teacher was handing the grades back to the class, one student said out loud that “people are stupid if they think God is not real." Instead of gently finding a middle ground, Roark reportedly said, "Yes! That is right! I had a student miss that on his test."

The teacher also reportedly taught the children that God created the Earth 6,000 years ago and that evolution was an “impossible” and “stupid theory made up by stupid people who don’t want to believe in God.” She told her class that the Bible was "100% true" and that Buddhism is “stupid.”

When the parents complained to Superintendent Sara Ebarb, the school official told them that "this is the Bible Belt" and suggested they change their son's faith. The school also offered to transfer C.C. to a school where there were “more Asians.”

The Lanes noticed that their son’s high school contained numerous Christian paintings and posters. Students were also led through prayers and handed religious literature condoning the evils of “birth control, premarital sex, rock music, alcohol, pornography, homosexuality, sorcery, and witchcraft.”

“We don't begrudge others their right to their Christian faith,” Scott Lane wrote. “Forcing your beliefs on another is not freedom; it is oppression.” http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/aclu-sues-bible-belt-school-a
llegedly-bullying-buddhist-student-article-1.1590578

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Ms. Roark teaches fifth and sixth grade science and social studies at Negreet High School, and apparently, she is an evangelical Protestant Christian who believes that it is appropriate to use her position as a public school science teacher to “witness” to her students. According to the complaint, when C.C. was a student in her class, she ridiculed and humiliated him for his Buddhist faith; she penalized him on tests for not praising the “Lord;” she agreed with students who called C.C. “stupid” for not believing in the God of the Bible.

And when his parents complained to the Superintendent of Sabine Parish Schools, Sara Ebarb, she allegedly told them to transfer C.C. to a school twenty-five miles away because there were “more Asians” at that school. Ebarb also allegedly told C.C.’s parents that he should just “change” his faith.

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Ebarb then asked whether C.C. “has to be raised Buddhist” and whether he could “change” his faith. Plaintiffs were shocked and expressed their dismay at Ebarb’s suggestion. Ebarb then asked whether C.C. “has to be raised Buddhist” and whether he could “change” his faith. Id. Plaintiffs were shocked and expressed their dismay at Ebarb’s suggestion. https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/memo_in_support_of_pi_
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I have been covering these issues for years now, and despite the repeated protestations of Governor Bobby Jindal, Superintendent John White, and members of the Louisiana Senate Education Committee- most notably Senator Conrad Appel, it has always seemed abundantly obvious that they have absolutely no respect for or understanding of the separation of church and state and the integrity of science education. Last year, when my friend Zack Kopplin testified for the third consecutive year on the repeal of what he appropriately refers to as the “misnamed and misguided” Louisiana Science Education Act (a law that allows public school teachers the ability to teach New Earth Creationism as an alternative and legitimate scientific theory to evolution), Senator Conrad Appel argued that the law was justified because no one had ever “complained” about its application. ”There is only one person who is making this an issue,” he said to Zack, whose repeal effort was supported and endorsed by 78 Nobel laureates, scientific organizations representing more than 10 million members, and petitions signed by more than 70,000 people.

It was a specious and stupid argument, to be sure. But once again, for the third year in a row, the repeal bill failed in committee. Senator Appel claimed that the only person who had ever complained about the law was Zack Kopplin. To him, Zack was the problem, not the unconstitutionality of the law. Make no mistake: The law is unconstitutional, something that Zack first recognized when he was only a sophomore in high school (in a public high school, by the way).

Last April, in an interview with NBC News, Governor Jindal defended the Louisiana Science Education Act, arguing that public school science teachers should teach “intelligent design” and “creationism.” Jindal, of course, was a Biology major at Brown University, and his stance on the issue belies his own education and is reflective, in my opinion, of the extraordinary lengths to which Jindal is willing to go in order to appease a small but vocal faction of the radical religious right. http://cenlamar.com/2014/01/22/zack-kopplin-louisiana-public-school-sy
stem/

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