One of the duties of my job is "service to schools". Most of the agents generally knock this out by volunteering at various 4-H events because in addition to meeting requirements you can also build up comp time since the events are generally held on the weekends and evenings. Now to the point, most of the 4-H'ers down here are home-schooled, and it seems that the predominant theme of their science education centers on this myopic literal creationist view of the world. I was judging a public speaking event last year where the kids had to discuss a science related project they did. This one girl did a project on sharks. She was a very good speaker. Articulate, engaging, frankly very impressive for a teenager. However, she started talking about how modern science failed to realize that the earth was really less than 10,000 years old, and sharks have only been around for about 4,000 years. Now, the “content” potion of this speech is a good portion of the overall score (like 40%), and I gave her a 0. She was clearly the best speaker, and the other judges all gave her high marks. At the end, we (the judges and the moderator) all had to confer, and they were all flabbergasted that I gave her such a low score. I got into a huge argument with the moderator (who happens to be a coworker and the head of the 4H program) about the reason for my low mark. I told her, it said plainly on the program that this was a “Science” project, and I could not in good conscious raise my score. The vast majority of these home-schooled kids are very bright, and all have aspirations to go on to college. These kids are going to be in for quite a shock when they get back their first Bio exam with a big fat “0” on it, when they use the “young earth theory” to support their answer on an essay question.