14 Wacky "Facts" from Louisiana Voucher Schools

Via Mother Jones magazine's website and boing boing, I bring you 14 Wacky "Facts" Kids Will Learn in Louisiana's Voucher Schools. Here are the highlights (but really, the whole thing has to be read):

1. "Dinosaurs and humans were definitely on the earth at the same time."
2. "[Is] it possible that a [dragon] really existed? Today some scientists are saying yes."
3. "God used the Trail of Tears to bring many Indians to Christ."
4. "Africa is a continent with many needs. It is still in need of the gospel."
5. "The majority of slave holders treated their slaves well."
6. "[The Ku Klux] Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross."
7. "Perhaps the best known work of propaganda to come from the Depression was John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath … Other forms of propaganda included rumors of mortgage foreclosures, mass evictions, and hunger riots … ."
8. "Ignoring 3,500 years of Judeo-Christian civilization, religion, morality, and law, the Burger Court held that an unborn child was not a living person but rather the "property" of the mother (much like slaves were considered property in the 1857 case of Dred Scott v. Sandford)."
9. "Satan hates the family and has hurled his venom against it in the form of Communism."
10. "Twain's outlook was both self-centered and ultimately hopeless…Twain's skepticism was clearly not the honest questioning of a seeker of truth but the deliberate defiance of a confessed rebel."
11. "Unlike the 'modern math' theorists, who believe that mathematics is a creation of man and thus arbitrary and relative, A Beka Book teaches that the laws of mathematics are a creation of God and thus absolute…A Beka Book provides attractive, legible, and workable traditional mathematics texts that are not burdened with modern theories such as set theory."
12. "[Gay people] have no more claims to special rights than child molesters or rapists."
13. "Global environmentalists have said and written enough to leave no doubt that their goal is to destroy the prosperous economies of the world's richest nations."
14. "But instead of this world unification ushering in an age of prosperity and peace, as most globalists believe it will, it will be a time of unimaginable human suffering as recorded in God's Word. The Anti-christ will tightly regulate who may buy and sell."

boing boing's science writer, Maggie Koerth-Baker, in a smart essay, points out that the set theory thing is particularly bizarre. Sure, the rest of the stuff we've all seen numerous times before, and it's nutty, but are we really doing anything besides pointing and laughing? (Yes, BTW, we are: we're scared to bejebus that there are a substantial number of people who believe this crap.) But, set theory is against God? According to Maggie it's because set theory is fundamentally related to the notion of different degrees of infinity and, as one religious person said, "God is the only infinity." So scratch set theory off the list.

The Mother Jones article does have a very funny image of an attempted Venn diagram from the Romney website: