Blaine Galliher was a member of the Alabama House of
Representatives (30. district) from 1994 to 2012, when he resigned to serve as
Governor Bentleys Legislative Director. For our purposes Galliher is most
notable for his strategy for getting creationism taught in public schools.
While legislators have not had much success forcing creationism onto the
curriculum, Galliher’s bill would allow schools to offer academic credit for a
released time program of creationist instruction taking place off school
property. His colleague, Mary Sue McClurkin (R-Indian Springs) thought “this would be a real good [opportunity],
to be able to study religion.” According to legal experts,
the strategy would not be less in violation of the Constitution than the usual
creationist attempts. And at least Galliher was pretty forthcoming about his intentions:
“They teach evolution in the textbooks,
but they don't teach a creation theory,” and “[c]reation has just as much right
to be taught in the school system as evolution does and I think this is simply
providing the vehicle to do that.”
Apparently the bill was introduced at the behest of a former teacher who was “fired in 1980 for reading the Bible and
teaching creationism at Spring Garden Elementary School when parents of the
public school sixth-grade students objected and he refused to stop,” one
Joseph Kennedy, who “still has a dream of
teaching public school students about creationism.” Kennedy and his
supporters were poised to offer a course on creationism if the bill should have
passed. Which, of course, it didn’t (though it passed committee).
Diagnosis: Alabama still doesn’t have much of a reputation
for its public education, and anti-education zealots like Galliher are at least
partly to blame for that. There are plenty of them where he came from.
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