The Hungarian Teachers' Union wrote a letter to the constitutional court protesting against a new bill (No. LI of 2010) modifíng the law on public education. According to the bill, local authorities may hand over their schools to a church institution on the spot, without delay. According to the union, this step violates teachers' and pupils' religious freedom, as this would mean that anyone may suddenly find themselves in a religious institution, and in some places, there may not be any secular alternative.
Though schools are mainly state financed, they are maintained by the local government, and as the state subsidies are not enough, the schools budget is usually supplemented from the (also rather tight) local budget. Church schools, on the contrary, receive an avarage of the supplements provided by the local government in addition to the regular state subsidies. Therefore handing over a local school to a church is financially rewarding for local goverments,
Secular Hungary
Showing posts with label creationism-id-pseudo_science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label creationism-id-pseudo_science. Show all posts
Saturday, 19 June 2010
Saturday, 17 April 2010
Creationist methods against linguistics
In Hungary, it's not only creationists and ID-people who try to use the law and the media as a stage for their issues instead of scientific debates. The relatively new Jobbik, a political party on the far right (which is sometimes called fascist) has launched a petition against something they call "Finno-Ugrian theory of origin", in order to force "the heritage of Hunor and Magor" into the schoolbooks.
Címkék:
creationism-id-pseudo_science,
education,
jobbik
Friday, 16 April 2010
Ad hominem for criticism
Hungarian sceptics were quite delighted to hear that a TED-conference was being organised in Hungary in cooperation with the weekly HVG. They were also quite surprised when they saw that the programme contained István Tasi [ishtvan tashee], whose ideas they know but to well. His book about "biology" is available in English, too (he also claims the book was a finalist at the USA Book News 2009 Best Book Award, though it seems each title paid for being listed becomes a finalist there). As the title of his presentation was identical with the title of his book, the sceptics wrote an open letter to the organisers, suggesting not that they cancel his presentation, but that the topic was changed to something more in line with his career, such as religion (their letter is available also in English http://criticalbiomass.freeblog.hu/files/2010/1/tedx/TED-Open_Letter.pdf). The organisers and Tasi said that this was a misunderstanding and the presentation was going to be about religion, anyway, and everything seemed to be all right.
Now, three months later,
Now, three months later,
Címkék:
creationism-id-pseudo_science,
hinduism
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