Origins: This image purportedly showing a "4th Grade Science Quiz" hit the Internet in April 2013, showing a classroom test entitled Dinosaurs: Genesis and the Gospel" and consisting of several true/false and short-answer questions about dinosaurs and the Bible, which a student had all answered correctly in accordance with religious
Young Earth creationism(rather than scientific) principles.
The title of the quiz is the same as that of a DVD produced by the group
Answers in Genesis and hews closely to the material presented therein, including the admonition that "If someone tells you the earth is millions of years old, what should be your reply? 'Were you there?'" and the reference to the Bible as "
The History Book of the Universe."
The image was of the purported quiz publicized in a post to Reddit's
Atheism forum, made by a user who maintained that it was a real quiz given at a private religious school in South Carolina, and that he was shown the quiz by the student's parent and took a picture of it with his iPhone. He declined to identify the school for now, stating that "I am not publicizing it since it is a small school and I don't want any publicity that might reflect badly on the kid" and "I don't want the kid to get in trouble, so I am keeping that under my hat until June when school is over," although he did allow that the school was "North of Greer, SC."
A few days after the Reddit posting, a reader wrote to us and reported that the quiz displayed above belonged to his 10-year-old daughter, saying:
I didn't know that this was
being taught to her until we heard a radio commercial together about the
Discover the Dinosaurs exhibit was coming to the TD Convention Center [in Greenville, South Carolina].
The Commercial starts out, "After 65 million years, the dinosaurs have
returned ..." She commented immediately that it was only four thousand years ago. When I corrected her, she snapped back, "Were you there?"
I have since taught my daughter differently, but I am sure she is confused now and plan to make sure she understands that teachers are people too and
can be factually wrong.
The test showed up [at] home a day later to my disgust.
It's a great school for Reading, Writing and Math. She is ahead of most of her peers and also is taking Latin there. But I now know to be vigilant for the rest of the year about her science teachings.
She will not be attending the school next year ...
He indicated that he wouldn't disclose the name of the school until the end of the school year in June, but he did forward us an image of the second page of the quiz:
We note that there is at least one school that meets all of the criteria described above: a private Christian Academy which is both in the Greenville area of South Carolina and north of Greer, which offers "science lessons [that] are creation-based," and which includes Latin in its fourth-grade curriculum. We are currently awaiting a response from that school about whether they were the source of the quiz .