Thoughts in a Haystack

Remember Matt LaClair, the Kearny, New Jersey high school student who dared to stand up to a popular American history teacher who was injecting his religious views into his classes? Well, he's not alone. All the way across the country, deliciously in the back yard of the Undiscovery Institute, another young man has shown remarkable maturity and courage:

Colin Moyer, a senior at Curtis High School in University Place, has been awarded a 2009 ACLU Youth Activist Scholarship for challenging the teaching of a form of creationism in his science class and for promoting freedom of speech at his school. ...

Moyer was shocked when his popular tenth-grade biology teacher began teaching a view of evolution that focused more on religious views than on scientific facts and didn't tolerate criticism. "A class that was usually interactive was suddenly single-sided," said Moyer. "Students were not allowed to ask questions, and there were no textbooks or tests."

Moyer began to read books and articles on evolution. He soon realized that his teacher was promoting creationism in the guise of "intelligent design," the same approach that was ruled unconstitutional in a 2005 case in Dover, Pennsylvania (Kitzmiller v. Dover).

Moyer contacted the ACLU and the National Center for Science Education and, with their support, was able to work out a settlement with the school that had the teacher forced to stop teaching intelligent design creationism.

Not content with that, Moyer then went on to organize and publish an alternative student newspaper, since the official one had ceased operating.

The paper has been recognized by the Student Press Law Center for exercising and protecting students' civil liberties. Moyer currently helps other student journalists whose newspapers are being censored and subjected to prior review.

Quite a resume for someone not old enough to drink.

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Via Seattle Weekly's blog, The Daily Weekly, which had the perfect title for this story: "Too Intelligent for Intelligent Design."
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