Education in Georgia

Georgia’s schools Superintendent Kathy Cox wants to remove the word “evolution” from the state’s high school curriculum. She says the word is simply a “buzzword”. The net effect of this proposal, if it were to be enforced, is that Georgia students would be less well equipped to succeed in college. Hardly a good direction for the state’s education department to move in. Former president Jimmy Carter is embarrassed. The former president says: “As a Christian, a trained engineer and scientist, and a professor at Emory University, I am embarrassed by Superintendent Kathy Cox’s attempt to censor and distort the education of Georgia’s students.”

But wait! There’s more! Joseph Jarrell, a history teacher in Georgia for 25 years, has examined the draft of the new high school history curriculum. The period 1800 to 1876 is not mentioned! (Link via Calpundit)

Students probably will not be remembering the Alamo; it won't be a topic of discussion in Georgia's high schools. Daniel Webster and Henry Clay will be omitted, as well as Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and the Underground Railroad.

Search in vain for discussion of the Civil War; that topic is off limits. In a course entitled "American History," students will not study our most devastating war. There is no mention of Fort Sumter, Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee or anything else associated with those years.

What is going on down there? Do they want to provide students with an education and prepare them for the rest of their life, or not?