An 11-year-old student in Boca Raton, Florida, has filed suit against the Palm Beach school board because public schools in the district refuse to teach evolution as part of the curriculum.
Brandon Silver, along with his attorney dad, Barry Silver, filed the 18-page lawsuit late last month.
Barry Silver told a local TV station:
“It’s such a magnificent story and it’s being neglected. The students are being deprived of learning from it because certain religious people don’t like the story because it contradicts the Bible and we think it is terrible that children shouldn’t learn the truth about where they came from.”
In a wonderful touch of ironic synchronicity, the Silver’s filed the lawsuit on November 24, which also happens to be the same date in 1859 when Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species was first published.
Attorney Silver says this entire matter can be solved be the school board and he will withdraw the suit against them:
“If they’re willing to sit down with us and talk about it and correct some of the things that are not proper in the school system about science we’re happy to resolve it with them. If not, we’ll go ahead and serve it and we will vigorously litigate the lawsuit.”
In the suit, the Silver’s allege:
“There are currently schools and textbooks which provide false, misleading, and dangerous information about certain religions and purposely omit factual information if it appears unfavorable to them and/or politically incorrect, which cause Palm Beach County public school students not to receive a high quality education required by the Florida law.”
As the father of a 9-year-old myself, I have to say that I agree completely with what the Barry and Brandon Silver are doing. Evolution is scientific fact, proven time and time again via the scientific method of research for hundreds of years. If I want my daughter to know the Biblical story of creation (which she does), then that is my right. But to deny science and deprive students of facts is nothing short of academic dishonesty and educational malpractice. And it is not the proper–or intelligent–way to prepare young people for the future.
