By Calvin Palmer
Tomorrow the Texas State Board of Education will hold a public hearing on science curriculum standards. The main topic of discussion is expected to be how teachers should treat the theory of evolution.
It is paradoxical that the country that launched the space shuttle Endeavour last Friday should be having such a hearing. But despite its advanced technological status, the United States is underpinned by medieval beliefs just as frightening and backward to the rest of the western world as the beliefs of fundamental Islam.
The state board will vote early next year on new standards for the science curriculum for Texas public school students. The vote is expected to be close.
The new guidelines are known as the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS.) Conservatives on the 15-member State Board of Education are likely to push for the retention of the present standard whereby high school students are taught the weaknesses of evolution. The standards adopted by the board will remain in place of the next decade.
To advance the case for Texas stepping into the 21st Century, a survey commissioned by the Texas Freedom Network in Austin shows 98 percent of the 450 biologists and biological anthropologists from 49 public and private universities in Texas who responded to the survey reject intelligent design as a concept and regard the teaching of it as invalid science.
The survey also shows 95 percent of the college professors want evolution to be the only theory of the origin of life taught in public schools.
Raymond Eve, a sociologist at the University of Texas at Arlington who conducted the survey said: “Opponents of evolution often say that we should teach “the controversy.” The response of scientists is: What controversy?”
Needless to say, opponents say that Eve’s study is flawed. Case Luskin at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, a think tank that advocates teaching students to analyze the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution, said fewer than half of the 1,019 faculty members contacted responded to the survey.
“It is a self-selecting survey,” Luskin said. “There is a well-documented culture of intimidation that makes scientists uncomfortable expressing their doubts about Darwinism. This just serves to reinforce that climate of intimidation.”
State board member David Bradley (Republican, Beaumont) said: “There is no one on this board trying to inject intelligent design or creationism. They are trying to whip up into a frenzy over something that is not going to happen. But by trying to remove strengths and weaknesses, yes, they will get a fight.”
He added that the requirement that teachers teach the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution is the result of a compromise offered by a Democratic board member 20 years ago.
Curriculum standards prepare children for college and jobs in today’s economy and that requires “sound science, not watered down politicized science,” said Kathy Miller, the president of Texas Freedom Network.
“Teach evolution and don’t water it down with creationism, intelligent design or phony weaknesses,” she said.
Miller said it would be a mistake to ignore the beliefs of the science professors from public and private universities across the state.
“This survey leaves no doubt that the political crusade against evolution and other attempts to dumb down our public school science curriculum are deeply misguided,” she said.
[Based on reports by the Houston Chronicle, Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Associated Press.]
1 Comment
November 18, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Well first and foremost, Luskin is an idiot and a puppet of fundamentalist extremists who think that teaching evolution is tantamount to preaching atheism. This is why he lies about studies and facts. A culture of academic intimidation? Somebody owes a few royalties to Ben Stein. I mean pardon scientists and teachers for having standards and requiring basic education…
Secondly, when analyzing “the weaknesses” of evolution, the Discovery Institute and the evangelical conservatives who back it, use Lamarckian evolution as their target. For those who don’t know, Lamarck was shown to be wrong more then 50 years ago and the modern theory of evolution is far above and beyond anything that Luskin and his squads of proselytizing ignoramuses know.
Every time the people from DI open their mouths, they seem intent on showing their biases and stunning ignorance. Only a complete idiot would use chemists, physicists and English majors as the scientific backing for creationism.