And Public School Administrators, too.
There is a message being sent out, by the Discovery Institute (a non profit creationist ‘think’ tank) encouraging creationist students and teachers to “Suit Up, Sign Up, Show UP, Act Up and Start Up” (whatever that all means) on February 12, which of course, is Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday.
Always carry a fossil with you.
Our local paper, the Star Tribune is re-printing a New York Times story on the Philidelphia “Year of Evolution” …. Which is just fine. But the story has a comment section and it would sure be nice to have a few more pro-evolution comments on it. Please consider contributing to it, here.Hope you get a chance to do it and that the Strib does not make it too difficult.
This summer, in fact.Don McLeroy, dentist and chair of the Texas School board (a state-wide elected body) is a creationist. Of evolution, he says “I just don’t think it’s true or it’s ever happened.”The 15 member board is stocked with seven creationists. It could have been worse, but the outcome of recent elections was slightly favorable. The governor of Texas is a creationist. Hell, most Texans are creationists.The most likely creationist effort will be to insert a “strengths and weaknesses” clause … an academic freedom provision, into the language.Here is a current PDG essay on the situation by Joyce Anderson writing for the Jewish Times.Here is a recent post on the academic freedom issue, and here is Mike and me talking about it on the radio.
Click here for the full post by Gallup.Far more Democrats believe in evolution than do those pesky Republicans. Interestingly, the configuration for “independents” looks just like the configuration for Democrats, not Republicans. Continue reading The Gallup Creationism Index Continues to Flatline
Continuing with our discussion of the Evolution 2008 conference …Yet another item from the first day of the conference, the pre-conference teachers day sponsored by Evolution 2008 and the Minnesota Citizens for Science Education (MnCSE) …The Minnesota Citizens for Science Education presented Ken Hubert with an award. I am blanking on the name of the award right now, but eventually, the MnCSE web site will probably have a page on this, or an announcement about it. (We need time for some dust to settle.)Who is Ken Hubert?Well, when it comes to the Evolution – Creationism ‘debate’, Ken is Case Law 101… Continue reading Ken Hubert, Hero of Life Science Teaching
Continuing with our discussion of the Evolution 2008 conference … many things have been going on and I have more to report than time to report it. But I will get to all of it, I assure you. Tonight, I just want to cover part of today’s Education Symposium (moderated by your’s truly) … not all of it at once, thought, as it is kind of complex.If you happen to work for the University of Minnesota or know anyone who does, best to not read this or let anyone know about it. This is a little to heavy to be spoken of openly. (Since there are only 11 of you who read my blog, I think we’ll be safe.)I want to comment briefly on two of the talks, one by PZ Myers and one by Mark Decker. The other talks in the symposium were excellent, but I want to address them separately.First, to dispel rumors that PZ Myers passed out on he lawn in the middle of the campus; This is simply not true. It is true that he had slept only four hours over the previous two and a half days, and had just flown in that morning from Vegas, but he did not pass out on the lawn. In fact, we were able to wire him up quite nicely. Here are before and after photos of a little treatment we applied to get him through the afternoon (This is me on the right and our techie in the middle, in the first photo).BEFORE:
AFTER: Continue reading Drs Myers and Decker: Advice on Teaching Evolution
The Answers in Genesis Creation Museum of Kentucky is planing to expand. Some of the expansion will be internal … the construction of additional kiosks. Some will be external, including the construction of a playground. All of the planned expansion efforts will be targeted towards children.Ken Ham, director of the museum, also indicated in a recent interview that the purpose of the museum was to convert people to Christianity. This is something that should be noted by any public schools planning on sending children to this facility.[source]
There is a point that I’ve been trying to make for the last few weeks now, off and on, and it is not working. So I’m going to try something new. Please bear with me, and consider the following three scenarios regarding the idea that the Earth is Round (or, possibly, flat): Continue reading How Society Will Accept Rational Science: The Best Way to Frame Global Warming and Evolution
Is a semi-organized effort to ‘crash’ obnoxious internet polls ethically acceptable? Is it boring? Is it stupid? I sometimes ask myself that question.But it’s complicated and will take a while to work out. In the mean time, PZ Myers points out this poll regarding the recent suggestion by a Maine school board member to drop evolution from the science classroom in his district.(Left side bar, two-thirds of the way down)
NCSE Press Release:
House Bill 923 was among the hundreds of bills that died in the Alabama legislature “because they did not pass in the house where they were introduced,” the Associated Press (May 7, 2008) reports. The latest in a string of “academic freedom” bills aimed at undermining the teaching of evolution in Alabama, HB 923 purported to protect the right of teachers in the state’s public schools (including both K-12 and colleges and universities) to “present scientific information pertaining to the full range of scientific views in any curricula or course of learning,” especially with regard to topics that “may generate controversy, such as biological or chemical origins.” The bill also purported to address the rights of students, providing that “no student in any public school or institution of higher education … shall be penalized in any way because he or she may subscribe to a particular position on any views.” In 2004, a cosponsor of a previous version of the bill, SB 336, told the Montgomery Advertiser (February 18, 2004), “This bill will level the playing field because it allows a teacher to bring forward the biblical creation story of humankind.”
Courtesy of the National Center for Science Education
I’ve been laid up with a nasty disease the last few days, so I’ve not been doing much productive. But I have gotten some TV watching in.Just in time, too. Has anyone else noticed that House (last night) and Numbers (tonight, in fact, airing this very moment) contain thinly veiled attacks on Intelligent Design, Expelled, and/or Ben Stein?
A Missouri House Committee has just approved for consideration of the House an Academic Freedom Bill drafted with the aid of the Discovery Institute.The bill has a nice twist to it in that it prohibits the consideration of any boundary or difference between religion and non-religion in regards to what to teach or how to teach it. In other words, the bill requires that state agencies, school administrators, and teachers ignore the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America in deference to state law. Therefore, challenges to this particular form of the bill would be a challenge to state’s rights.Such a challenge would result in the bill being struck down as clearly as any with any other challenge, but it could take longer. If there are sympathetic judges in the right places, a school district that obeys the higher level Federal law (or a teacher or a particular school) could be forced into the court system for one or two rounds of slash and burn lawyering.The best way to fight this sort of thing? Probably to make sure that individual legislators who introduce such bills, and who chair the committees that approve them, and so on, are held accountable for the legal fees that will be paid by cash-strapped school districts. Of course, such elected officials can’t be held accountable in any pecuniary way, but they can be made to pay by being tossed out of office by disgruntled taxpayers.The stamp of the Discovery Institute is obvious in both the wording of the bill and the fact that not a single news outlet has coverage of this event, but it is covered on the DI web site. They really ought to be a bit more discrete as I’m sure they will later want to deny involvement in this particular effort (at about the time the legal bills come in).This is just more of the Wedge Strategy, more of the Trojan Horse approach, and more of the same attack on our public school system, it’s children, and their teachers.Here is the main text of the bill: Continue reading Unpatriotic Missouri Academic”Freedom”Bill Advances Through Committee