Mike Thomas at Rhetoric & Rhythm wonders if the deck was stacked against science: The review team sent to evaluate the science education offerings at the Institute for Creation Research does not look like a fair cross-section of educators, had no science representation, and had an odd surplus of creationism connections, he learned from reading the San Antonio Express-News:
What happened is that a delegation of so-called experts made a formal site visit to the ICS in Dallas and gave them a glowing report which led to a unanimous vote of affermation from the accreditation committee. Now the issue will go to the full committee in January.
But who were these “experts” that evaluated the ICS? The E-N reports thusly:
The trio consisted of two scholars at Texas A&M University-Commerce, reference librarian David Rankin and educational leadership professor Lee “Rusty” Waller, and Gloria White, managing director of the Dana Research Center for Mathematics and Science Education at the University of Texas at Austin.
A reference librarian and an education leadership professor? Where are the scientists?? Oh, and here is the kicker. The educational leadership prof is also a Baptist minister.
And the third person, Gloria White, is a graduate of Abilene Christian University, a private religious school in West Texas.
It certainly sounds like the deck was stacked in favor of the fundamentalist crowd.
I’m still wondering why the legal evaluation does not include a question about whether it would be legal to do what ICR trains people to do. Public schools hiring people with graduate degrees in creationism should probably ask for indemnity from ICR against the inevitable lawsuit that comes when they teach what ICR trains them to teach.
The audacity of this plan takes one’s breath away, doesn’t it?
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 