An image allegedly showing a “4th Grade Science Questionnaire” hit the Internet in April 2013, showing a classroom test titled “Dinosaurs: Genesis and the Gospel” and consisting of several true / false questions and a short answer about dinosaurs and the Bible, which a student answered correctly according to the religious principles of Terra Jovem creationism (instead of scientific):
The title of the questionnaire was the same as that of a DVD produced by the group Answers in Genesis and followed closely the material presented in it, including the admonition that “If anyone tells you that the earth is millions of years old, what should your answer be? ‘You were there?’ ”And the reference to the Bible as“ The History Book of the Universe ”.
The image was from the alleged questionnaire posted in a post on the Reddit r / atheism forum, made by a user who claimed to be a real questionnaire given at a private religious school in South Carolina, and that the questionnaire was shown by the student parent and took a picture with your iPhone. He declined to identify the school, stating that “I am not publicizing it because it is a small school and I don’t want any publicity that could reflect negatively on the child” and “I don’t want the child to get into trouble, so I will keep it under my control. hat until June, when classes end ”, although he allowed the school to be“ North of Greer, SC ”.
A few days after posting on Reddit, a reader wrote to us saying that the questionnaire shown above belonged to his 10-year-old daughter, saying:
I didn’t know it was being taught to her until we heard a radio commercial together about the Discover the Dinosaurs exhibit that was coming to the TD Convention Center [in Greenville, South Carolina].
The commercial starts like this: “After 65 million years, the dinosaurs came back …” She immediately commented that it was only four thousand years ago. When I corrected her, she said, “Were you there?” Since then, I have taught my daughter differently, but I am sure she is confused now and I intend to make sure that she understands that teachers are also people and can be really wrong.
The test appeared [at] home a day later to my chagrin.
It is a great school for reading, writing and math. She is ahead of most of her colleagues and is also studying Latin there. But now I know that I must be vigilant for the rest of the year regarding his science teachings.
She won’t be going to school next year …
He indicated that he would not disclose the name of the school until the end of the current school year, in June, but forwarded an image of the second page of the questionnaire to us:
We note that there is a school, the Blue Ridge Christian Academy, which meets all of the criteria described above: a private Christian Academy located in the Greenville area of South Carolina and north of Greer, which offers “science classes. [that] they are based on creation, ”which includes Latin in its fourth-grade curriculum. Blue Ridge did not answer our question, but Ken Ham and Mark Looy of Answers in Genesis (AiG) confirmed on the AiG blog that the questionnaire really originated with this school:
Recently, in South Carolina, a fourth-grade teacher at the Blue Ridge Christian Academy (a K-12 non-denominational Christian school) showed students a DVD of a children’s program, in which composer AiG and dinosaur sculptor Buddy Davis and I are introduced. In this DVD, we teach children the history of the universe from the Bible, with a special emphasis on teaching dinosaurs from a biblical perspective (as we do within our Creation Museum). The teacher distributed a question sheet to the children to test what they learned from the DVD.
A friend of one of the parents, who has a child enrolled in the fourth grade class, posted the test sheets on the internet. The father, like all parents who have children enrolled in this academy, signed a statement, recognizing the understanding that sending their child to this Christian school would mean that they would learn biblical Christianity. The father expressed dismay because his daughter learned a biblical approach to dinosaurs. Posting the questionnaire on the internet resulted in several atheist websites posting the questions and answers, and many of them responded with anger and vehement attacks on the school.
Blue Ridge Christian Academy has already been closed due to a lack of funds.