Children are not the people who have advanced scientific understanding. It’s adults who were educated based on the best scientific information available. And, if you allow children to dictate what is and isn’t valid science, why should you stop there? Why not allow them to say what is valid history, or what is valid mathematics? Why would only science be held to a standard that allows children who are not yet even educated in the subject to determine what is and isn’t science?

Unless, of course, you are merely trying to undermine science to protect the stranglehold of ignorance that allows religion to keep money flowing into coffers. It’s absolutely pathetic if that’s your motivation.

Boy, you’d think a troll “god” could do better than that.

Perhaps he meant it as an imperative?

The town hall combined a discussion of the changes to the history standards as well as sci/math standards, and the proposed history standards were very much in line with what the SBOE’s “advisors” are planning to do to paint us as a conservative Christian nation.

So, people objected to that.

The ratio of creationists making comments re: the science standard was about 3:1 over the people actually wanting, you know, science in science classes. I had signed up to speak but by 10:30 they were not even close to getting to me, so I left.

The committee mostly ignored the public input.

You may not like that specific benchmark, and I agree. But if it were removed will the creationist teachers simply stop teaching creation and start teaching good evolutionary theory and ideas? Yes, its a loop hole for them, but its one that is only a loop hole in isolation from the other standards and if viewed in an extremely skewed way. A teacher that uses this benchmark as a justification to teach a 6000 year old planet will screw some kids over and cost their school district several million dollars but will not win a case.

I would also argue that fighting over this one benchmark, does jeopardize the entire standards document. I would point out that evolution is on the front page of the standards document and is a substrand of the life sciences! This is a far cry from avoiding the issue all together or using bullshit mealy mouthed phrases like change over time. The war is still being fought, but this represents some significant changes in the position of the battle lines.

It may seem absurd to many (it did to me not so long ago) that a basic underpinning on arguably the largest scientific area being discussed openly is a big improvement. But the reality is, it is. Remember how many candidates for president of the US from the republican party raised their hands in support of evolution? By the way, getting evolution openly into the current version of the standards was in no way simple, but that’s a story for another day…..at least the day after the rulesmaking process closes.

http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/Academic_Excellence/Academic_Standards/Science/index.html

Is that correct?
Would a public hearing only make matters worse?