Luther Burbank Quotes

This is a terrific statement of Americanism at any time, but it is particularly notable in 1888. At that time anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism were both heavy throughout the country. Jim Crowe and racism was rampant, Orientals were heavily discriminated against especially on the West Coast. Irish and Italians were not wanted in most of America except as manual laborers.

The reform bill was developed by the then current Minister of Education who views were quite opposite to Corkey’s. One of the reforms was to eliminate the Bible Teaching and other religious instructions in the public schools. Then these other undesirables would enroll in the public schools whereas before, the Protestants were able to operate segregated public schools where very few Catholics would attend. The religious bigotry by the Catholics in the South of Ireland was equaled if not exceeded by that of the Protestants in Northern Ireland.

She had just defeated the previous board chairwoman, Linda Holloway,who had voted with the majority the previous year to revise the standards so that evolution would not be included. See Linda Holloway {603677}.

The most contentious issues regarding this Constitutional principle is the attempted prohibition of the teaching of evolution in public schools and/or the requirement to teach “creation science”, a contrary view about evolution which is religious and not science. Evolution is particularly contentious because most religions differ widely on the subject. Amongst Jews, Muslims and Christians, evolution is opposed by most strict fundamentalists and endorsed by the rest—the majority. Except for Roman Catholics where all, even the fundamentalists, accept the Theory of Evolution.

A teacher had been arrested and threatened with jail because he had taught Darwin’s Theory of Evolution in a high school science class. The ACLU paid for famed attorney, Clarence Darrow, to defend Scopes in the famous trial that exposed the ignorance and bias of the schools that prohibited teaching about evolution as it contravened the Protestant fundamentalist Biblical version of the creation of humans. While the ACLU had a major victory, even today many school systems—mostly in the South—still prohibit such teaching and while no teacher can be jailed, they can be fired for not following the curriculum of the local school board.

The Saudi Arabian Royal Family had been large financial and political supporters of the Wahabbi sect of Sunni Islam. The mullahs in turn supported the monarchy and provided religious cover, so important in Islamic countries. However, the Wahhabis took the Saudi money and set up Madrassas (Islamic Schools) throughout the kingdom and in many other countries of the world including the United States. However, the Wahhabi curriculum included extensive hateful and violence advocating materials regarding non-Muslims. After 9-11, the Royal Family realized that they were also the targets of the terrorists who ironically were recruiting many of their fighters and suicide bombers from the very Wahhabi Madrassas that the Saudis had funded. They claim that they were not previously aware of the extent of the violence taught in the Madrassas (hard to believe) but they resolved to make changes. As a first step, the examined all the texts and teaching guides of the institutions they had funded and demanded that changes be made. (However, they had little influence on those Madrassas outside the kingdom that were not dependent on current Saudi money such as many of the schools in Pakistan and The West Bank and Gaza. These did not change and continued to produce terrorists.). al-Faisal however showed that the Saudi’s were now serious about reform of the teaching by going a large step further, and focusing on the teachers. Saudi Arabia began a program to vet all the teachers, imams and other clerics, a step that was a remarkable reversal from the situation on 9-11.

At the Democratic convention of 1924, the party was split over a proposed resolution that would denounce the Ku Klux Klan by name. Bryan had an opportunity to denounce the Klan, but his dwindling political base in the south contained many Klansmen. After his speech he was mercilessly heckled by the crowd. Bryan claimed he had never been so humiliated in his life: