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
Tag Archives: Science Education
Ken Hubert, Hero of Life Science Teaching
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
Drs Myers and Decker: Advice on Teaching Evolution
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
How birds fly (Book review)
Birds: Nature’s Magnificent Flying Machines
This is a well done and highly recommended book. Continue reading How birds fly (Book review)
How Society Will Accept Rational Science: The Best Way to Frame Global Warming and Evolution
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
Internet Poll on Dropping Evolution from School Curriculum in Maine
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)
85% of Americans Want a Presidential Debate on Science
Despite the fact that the presidential candidates will not accept the invitation extended by Science Debate 2008 for a nationally broadcast science forum in May there is ample evidence to suggest that they should: A new poll … a real poll .. indicates that 85% of US Adults agree that there should be a debate.The poll results can be found here.
Here is a summary of the poll: Continue reading 85% of Americans Want a Presidential Debate on Science
Unpatriotic Missouri Academic”Freedom”Bill Advances Through Committee
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
The sun is riz, the sun is set … and we ain’t outta Texas yet.
But plans for the Institute for Creation Research Masters Degree in Creationistic Biology for High School Teachers is out of Texas.
Members of the Academic Excellence and Research Committee and the Participation and Success Committee voted unanimously to approve the recommendation of Raymund Paredes, the state’s commissioner of higher education, not to approve the Institute’s application. The full Coordinating Board will vote on the committees’ recommendation on Thursday.”The issue before the Coordinating Board isn’t about academic freedom or free speech. The issue is whether the state will sanction the teaching of religion as science. Committee members today recognized that doing so would be a disservice both to science and to faith.Just as important, our state’s leaders have said that they want our public schools to do a better job preparing students for college and the jobs of the 21st century. If we’re serious about that goal, then we must be serious about how we train our teachers. Approving an advanced degree in science education from an institution that doesn’t really teach science would represent a huge step backward.”
Yeee hawww!!!!!
Institute for Creation Research Masters Degree in Biology
The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) has, some time ago, filed for approval to run a masters degree program in life science education. The purpose of the degree is to train educators to present biology in a way that is consistent with Christian Biblical beliefs, as opposed to actual scientific knowledge. The Texas board in charge of these matters is taking the proposal under consideration this week. (Please sign the petition linked below!)The Texas Freedom Network has recently conducted a survey of Texas colleges and university faculty to get their opinions on this proposal. Continue reading Institute for Creation Research Masters Degree in Biology
Florida Academic Freedom Bill Passes in State Senate
A bill designed to make it easier to introduce creationism into public school classrooms has passed in the Florida Senate by a 21 to 17 vote margin. The bill was proposed by Senator Ronda Storms, Republican, and is modeled after a template provided by the Discovery Institute. Continue reading Florida Academic Freedom Bill Passes in State Senate
Louisiana’s Stealth Creationism Bill Takes A Hit
Louisiana State Senate Bill 561 is an “academic freedom” bill intended to push discussion of creationism, global warming denialism, and so on into state public schools. This is the latest in a long series of efforts of right wing fundamentalist christians to indoctrinate public school students in their particular religious (and political) beliefs. Continue reading Louisiana’s Stealth Creationism Bill Takes A Hit
NASA Science Web Site
The Open Source content management system PLONE runs the newly released NASA Science web site.The site has something for everyone (researchers, educators, kids, and “citizen scientists”). The Plone seems to be working quite nicely.Some of it is still a little rough. The Space Calendar link seems to be broken, and the email to the “responsible government official” for the site (who, by the way, is Greg Williams) gets you an email to “noone@nasa.gov” …There appears to be a number of distinctly different ways to navigate on this site, including a main in-your-face graphical orientation to four main topics (Earth, Heliophysics, Planets, Astrophysics) each of which leads to a page with a “Big Questions/FocusAreas/Missions” dynamic side bar menu. (These sub-sub topics, big questions, missions, etc., are re-grouped on thier own pages accessible from the top menue as well)Many of the links seem to lead to fairly specific questions or NASA programs enveloping lists of missions that address those questions or are run by those programs, or to the missions themselves with a sidebar indicating what the “related big questions” are.The site has actually done a pretty good job of assembling, correlating, and cross-indexing the myriad components of NASA.So what about the NASA.gov site? This looks to me like an eventual replacement.
Expelled Busted
Things are happening exactly as I predicted…(Expelled! The Movie To Be Pulled From Theaters Following Myers/Dawkins-Gate Screwup)The movie “Expelled!” with Ben Stein (you may have heard of it) includes a segment consisting of the animation of the inside workings of a cell. It is said to look a lot like a production that came out of Harvard and a private animation firm last year or so:People who saw the clip used in Expelled! were beginning to think that the video Expelled! used was not the Harvard video because there were some differences. However, this remains unclear. My thinking on this was that it was the original video but somehow filtered through a process that may have rendered it a little different. Sort of like copying and pasting some text from a copyrighted source, changing the type face and font size, and declaring that it was different.Well, the other shoe has dropped, the shit has hit the fan, the cows have come home to roost… Continue reading Expelled Busted
Minnesota Governor Pawlenty Smashes Hopes for Better Bell
Tim Pawlenty has demonstrated, in many ways and on many occasions, that he is the worst governor the State of Minnesota has ever had. The most recent proof was his line item veto of funding for the Bell Museum of Natural History, and his line item veto of the funding necessary to further develop public transit in the Twin Cities. Neither surprises me. This is the governor who gave us a creationist education director, and this is the governor who let the bridge fall down. Education and transportation are not his bailiwicks. But one has to ask, if he can’t understand these two important issues (which habitually top various lists of what is important to the citizenry), when what is he good at? (See below for one possible suggestion.)
Continue reading Minnesota Governor Pawlenty Smashes Hopes for Better Bell