The ICR is accredited by Bush administration through a fiat issued by Secretary of education Margaret Spelling through a religious organization, TRACS.
What this means is that whom ever holds the executive office is permitted to essentially determine what is taught as reality in the countries academic institutions. We have lost many public K-12 schools to home, charter, and private alternatives. In a few generations higher learning could slip just as far away from the paradigm familiar to the rest of the world. Before we laugh this off we should remember that the Nazis gained their initial purchase on the German psyche through academia first. As academicians, I believe we have a special responsibility to be on guard for persistent lies. We should be supporting higher standards that do not permit ambiguous accreditation and are not subject to the vagaries of political philosophy. "Those who can make make us believe absurdities can make us commit atrocities." -Voltaire - Jim Sparks http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2004/03/how_the_icr_got.html Now, back in the late 1970s, an accreditation agency called the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools, or TRACS,<http://www.tracs.org/>was formed. It adopted a list of accreditation criteria <http://www.tracs.org/standards.htm> that is far more specific than those employed by most accreditors. For instance, to qualify for TRACS accreditation, a school must adhere to a list of eleven "Biblical standards," <http://www.tracs.org/standards.pdf> including: * 1. The unique divine inspiration of all the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments as originally given, so that they are infallible and uniquely authoritative and free from error of any sort, in all matters with which they deal, scientific and historical as well as moral and theological. 2. Special creation of the existing space-time universe and all its basic systems and kinds of organisms in the six literal days of the creation week. 3. The full historicity and perspicuity of the biblical record of primeval history, including the literal existence of Adam and Eve as the progenitors of all people, the literal fall and resultant divine curse of the creation, and worldwide cataclysmic deluge and the origin of nations and languages at the Tower of Babel. . ..* In 1991, Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander overruled the recommendations of his advisors and extended recognition to TRACS. This brought some serious criticism (including an entire book called *When The TRACS Stop Short, *by degree-mill gadfly Steven Levicoff, author of *Name It And Frame It; *unfortunately, Levicoff's books, which were on-line for a long time, are no longer available. <http://levicoff.tripod.com/>) Immediately after its recognition, TRACS did some highly questionable things, among which was its accreditation of ICR's graduate school, despite the fact that the chairman of TRACS' board of directors was none other than Henry Morris, <http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/352.asp> founder of ICR. http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2004/03/how_the_icr_got.html -- James L. Sparks Jr. M.Sc. Freelance Ecology 4530 E. Seminary Ave. Richmond, VA 23227 804.426.2479 (cell) "Quis custodiet ipso custodes?" -Juvenal
