That whole nonsense about teaching alchemy, astrology, flat earth, geocentrism, pi=3 is a strawmen argument. It’s nothing but hyperbole designed to discredit and disparage creationists.
No Christian or creationist believes in those things and portraying them as if they do is not only intellectually dishonest, it’s just plain dishonest.
For the record, though, the PUBLIC school I went to DID address those things. They are part of the history of science and as such need to be studied.
People can mock alchemy all they want, but alchemy was the accepted science of the day. We know NOW that it isn’t possible as they thought it was, but that’s because the research they did in the area demonstrated it. They learned a lot about actual chemistry through their study of it. It was not wasted research.
The teaching of creation in public schools is not going to send us back into the dark ages, it will not result in the deterioration of science standards across the country. It was taught in public schools in this country for centuries with no deleterious effect on the progress of science during that entire time.
There is simply no basis for the claim that it will hurt the science education the kids are receiving. On the contrary, evolution has had a monopoly in the school system for decades and has done the science education no good. We continue to fall behind in the world. There is simply no way to lay the blame for that at the feet of the creationists or teaching of creation in public schools, as it isn’t happening.
As a matter of fact, the private Christian schools and homeschools who do teach both creation and evolution side by side, consistently outperform the public schools in both standardized test scores and SAT/ACT scores. So much for that alleged inferior education.
Can you give me an example of a country that teaches creationism as science, and can objectively be shown to be "ahead of us" in science education?