When I was in school, there was little debate over whether or not Creationism should/could be taught as an alternative to Darwinian evolution. While we were only taught evolution, it was always addressed very carefully as the generally accepted hypothesis in the scientific community, not scientific fact, and not a replacement for religious doctrine. We were told that we were being taught what they schools could teach, but this did not mean what we believed religiously was wrong. It was always approached as education, not force feeding. We were, and still are, free to draw our own conclusions.
Recently, this has come to the forefront of the news since the Dover Area School District has decided to put themselves above the U.S. Constitution and require that their students be taught Intelligent Design, a non-denominational, although religious, theory that the universe is simply too complex to be created by "chance", and therefore had to be created by a devine entity. While I have not heard whether or not evolution will still be taught, I still believe this goes against the seperation of church and state.
I have no problems with these theories, just the use of my tax dollars to teach religion. Why can't the schools offer an elective or a club activity to explore this theory (without using tax $$)?
Since the vote at the school district, 2 of the 3 dissenting votes have resigned, and the school board has stacked the membership in their favor, ensuring that another vote would not overturn their first "success". Since then, the ACLU has filed a federal law suit citing the unconstitutionality of the requirement to teach religion in a publicly funded school.
I must admit, I like the quote from Angie Yingling, a discenting voter when she said "Anyone with half a brain should have known we were going to be sued,You can’t do this." I agree with her completely.
While talking to a few collegues/friends of mine at work, I was informed that Bruce Eckel puts his books on programming up on the web in HTML format for free download. One of these books, "Thinking in Java" is listed as one of the Top 10 Must Read Java Programming Books.
The books can be downloaded here.