Creationism outburst in Texas

January 22, 2009

Obama promised to put science in its proper place, in federal policy.

In Texas, however, evolution and science education are under assault today as the State Board of Education (SBOE) looks at revising science standards for public schools.  Creationists have been sharpening their knives for months, with a stiff-necked creationist heading SBOE as a fifth columnist.

SBOE votes today (perhaps already, but I can’t find the story of a vote).  At issue is the recommendations by scientists, educators and parents to teach evolution without creationist language that misleads students.  SBOE Chairman Don McLeroy has vowed to insert more religion into science classes.  The board is nearly evenly split between creationists and backers of science, so the vote could go either way.

Here at the Bathtub we’ll feature testimony from science supporters in a few posts, as we can snag them from witnesses.

McLeroy and his supporters at SBOE worked hard to stack the witness list, to prevent testimony from parents, teachers, scientists and educators who all favor new standards that eliminate a decade-old statement about “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution theory, hoary old creationist propaganda that has no place in a curriculum for the 21st century.  Several science witnesses were bumped from testifying, and the board was quite rude to some of America’s best scientists, appearing to fear what the scientists had to say.

It’s an ugly situation.  Say a prayer for Texas.

Resources:i

Leave a Comment » | History, Science, State school boards, TEKS, Texas, Texas Citizens for Science, Texas Freedom Network | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

A Texas riddle indeed: Why is McLeroy hanging with creationists?

August 21, 2008

Here’s the post from über creationist Ken Ham’s site, in its entirety:

A Texas Riddle

Last week, AiG speaker Mike Riddle did a series of talks in Brenham, Texas. On the first day, Mike did four different sessions for 1st–6th graders. He usually speaks to young people on topics like “The Riddle of the Dinosaurs,” AiG’s well-known “7C’s of History,” and fossils.

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On the next day, Mike did four special sessions for teachers. Each presentation was geared to help instructors be better prepared to teach origins in the public schools. In addition to speaking on what creationists believe, he spoke on understanding presuppositions and assumptions in the origins debate–and using critical thinking skills. Mike also had the opportunity to meet with the Chairman of the Texas State School Board, Don McLeroy (a biblical creationist), and gave presentations to an open audience at the Brenham High School auditorium.

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Mike and Don McLeroy (Chairman, Texas State School Board)

“Special sessions for teachers?” Oy vey.

1. I’ll wager, if those were real, public school teachers, they were given continuing education credits for attending. That would be illegal, especially if Riddle did not preface his presentations with a legal disclaimer that what he urges is contrary to Texas science standards and contrary to the Constitution. Want to wager whether he did?

2. What’s McLeroy doing there? Doesn’t he know he’s supposed to maintain antiseptic separation from such controversial stuff? They fire people from the TEA for attending sessions that are legal and support the Texas standards. What sort of Quisling action is this on McLeroy’s part?

3. Is Rick Perry watching? The state’s legal fees will rise dramatically as a result of this kind of bad judgment at the SBOE. Can Texas taxpayers afford this?

4. Why does Don McLeroy hate Texas’s smarter, college-bound children so?

It takes a particular form of chutzpah to stand idly by while qualified science teachers are fired from the state’s education agency for promoting science, and then go cavort with creationists. It may not be cowardice exactly, but courage is its antonym.

4 Comments | Education, Ethics, History, Politics, Religion, Science, State school boards, Teaching, Texas, Texas Citizens for Science, Texas Education Agency (TEA), Voodoo science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Texas education board turns authoritarian

May 24, 2008

Nobody can recall the ceremony, but Don McLeroy made it clear yesterday that he thinks he’s been designated Kommissar of Education, ramming through a proposal altering English standards for the next decade — without debate, without even a chance to read the proposal.

It’s probably not so bad a pig in a poke as it might be — of course, no one had the chance to review it, so no one knows, really — but the processes used, worthy of Napoleon or Kruschev on a bad day, should give cause for concern.

Gotta think about this one for a while.

15 Comments | Education, Education quality, Government, History, State school boards, TAKS, Teaching, TEKS, Texas, War on Education | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Texas puts off decision on creationism degrees

January 16, 2008

Reporter Ralph K. M. Haurwitz at the Austin American-Statesman wrote a story at the newspaper’s blog, The Lowdown on Higher Ed, saying the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) will not decide the creationism degree issue until mid-April.
January’s meeting still has the item on the agenda, officially, but the actual vote won’t come without considerably more study.
The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board had been scheduled to consider the proposal by the Dallas-based Institute for Creation Research at a meeting Jan. 24.But Eddy Miller, dean of the institute’s graduate school, said in an e-mail to the coordinating board Monday that the school needs more time “to do justice to the concerns you raised,” according to a news release issued by the coordinating board. Miller asked the board to delay consideration of the matter until its April meeting.

Texas’s science community panned the motion. Rumors say many of Texas’s top scientists wrote or called to urge disapproval of the motion.

There’s still time to send a letter calling for a stand for good, hard science. Details, as always, at the Texas Citizens for Science page.

3 Comments | Creationism, Education, Education quality, Higher education, Religion, Science, Texas, Texas Citizens for Science | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

This morning! Texas science standards on radio and internet

January 3, 2008

P. Z. Myers tells us to tune in to a Houston radio station (and he’s in Minnesota, so it must be important to come from so far away):

I was just notified that one of the people working for Texas Citizens for Science (the good guys) will be discussing the Chris Comer incident with someone from the Texas Freedom Network (more good guys). It doesn’t sound like there will be a lot of drama and confrontation, but there will be information and an opportunity to see the decent, intelligent side of Texas represented.

Thresholds’ host George Reiter will be interviewing Steven Schafersman, President of Texas Citizens for Science, and Dan Quinn, communications director for the Texas Freedom Network, on the politics in Texas that led up firing of Chris Comer, director of science at the Texas Education Agency for ‘misconduct and insubordination’ and of ‘siding against creationism and the doctrine that life is the product of ‘intelligent design.’ The show is on KPFT, Houston, 90.1 FM, from 11am-12noon this Thursday, Jan 3, 2008. It can be picked up live on the website, http://www.KPFT.org.

And in his comments, this one is rather vital:

That’s 9 am Pacific, 10 am Mountain, 11 am Central, noon Eastern. Wherever you are, you can go to http://www.kpft.org and click on the ‘listen now’ button.

The host (G. Reiter) is also a professor of physics at U. of Houston and so presumably knows a thing or two about science. (I’m his postdoc, but that might not be much of an endorsement.)

Listen and learn!

Update:  You may download the program for a limited time, in MP3 format, from the radio station’s website.

People listening to radio, from GlowingDial.com

Leave a Comment » | Creationism, Evolution, Politics, Religion, Science, State school boards, TEKS, Texas, Texas Citizens for Science, Texas Freedom Network | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Texas officials plan to fight evolution in science standards

December 13, 2007

Texas political conservatives stand exposed in their plans to gut biology standards to get evolution out of the curriculum after the Dallas Morning News detailed their plans in a front-page news story today.

LEANDER, Texas – Science instruction is about to be dissected in Texas.

You don’t need a Ph.D. in biology to know that things rarely survive dissection.

The resignation of the state’s science curriculum director last month has signaled the beginning of what is shaping up to be a contentious and politically charged revision of the science curriculum, set to begin in earnest in January.

Intelligent design advocates and other creationists are being up front with their plans to teach educationally-suspect and scientifically wrong material as “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution. Of course, they also plan to fail to teach the strengths of evolution theory.

“Emphatically, we are not trying to ‘take evolution out of the schools,’ ” said Mark Ramsey of Texans for Better Science Education, which wants schools to teach about weaknesses in evolution. “All good educators know that when students are taught both sides of an issue such as biologic evolution, they understand each side better. What are the Darwinists afraid of?”

Texans for Better Science is a political group set up in 2003 to advocate putting intelligent design into biology textbooks for religious reasons. It is an astro-turf organization running off of donations from religious fundamentalists. (Note their website is “strengthsandweaknesses” and notice they feature every false and disproven claim IDists have made in the last 20 years — while noting no strength of evolution theory; fairness is not the goal of these people, nor is accuracy, nor scientific literacy).

Scientists appear to be taking their gloves off in this fight. For two decades scientists have essentially stayed out of the frays in education agencies, figuring with some good reason that good sense would eventually prevail. With the global challenges to the eminence of American science, however, and with a lack of qualified graduate students from the U.S.A., this silliness in public school curricula is damaging the core of American science and competitiveness.

Can scientists develop a voice greater than the political and public relations machines of creationists.

As Bette Davis said on stage and screen: Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Also see:

2 Comments | Accuracy, Biology, Creationism, Curricula, Education, Education quality, Intelligent Design, Religion, Science, Separation of church and state | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Live blogging NOVA and Dover evolution trial?

November 13, 2007

For the next couple of hours, I’ll be watching instead of blogging, mostly (“Judgment Day: Evolution on Trial”). PZ is liveblogging, he says. I’d go for the popcorn, but we just finished dinner.

These issues are still very much alive. Texas science standards are up for rewriting now (a bunch to come on that here, from Texas Citizens for Science, soon). Texas biology books will be updated in the near future. Creationists have flocked to Texas in anticipation.

Judge Jones was featured on The News Hour tonight — the man is a statesman of great stature, refusing to denigrate either side, but carefully explaining the law and the judge’s duty.

Stay tuned to PBS tonight. You will not see anything like this program on any commercial outlet, broadcast or cable. PBS remains one of the shining lights of our government, a wonderful idea executed with flair.

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7:56 p.m.: The guy playing Kenneth Miller in the trial reenactment is good, but he’s nowhere near as engaging as Miller is. This NOVA is a good deal: I wish someone had a good video of Miller’s presentation to the Texas State Board of Education in the 1990s (1999? 1997? I’ll have to look that up). It was a stellar performance before a hostile crowd, and it was one of the big rocks that stopped the anti-evolution tide.

For that matter, I wish we had copies of the testimony of Andy Ellington and Stephen Weinberg from 2003. I understand a video may still exist (Discovery Institute taped the whole thing, but don’t expect to see them ever let this stuff out for others to see — it’s too powerful). Ellington was afire, and Weinberg was as statesmanlike as anyone will ever see him. It was great.

Nick Matzke got a little camera time earlier. He’s a hero in this story, and he was grand earlier in other states.

Watch this stuff carefully. The scientists and policy defenders of evolution are almost to a person, wonderful people. You’d enjoy a dinner with Eugenie Scott. You’d love to spend an afternoon with Andrew Ellington. There are scientific, political and religious differences galore, but very few really disagreeable people defending evolution. Funny: The pro-evolution side demonstrates the virtues of Christian charity better than the self-proclaimed Christian side. (And as if on cue, just after 8:00 p.m. Bill Buckingham shows up to attack the teachers as non-Christian, or not good Christians, even the ministers’ kids — and he looks crabby, if not downright bothered.)

8:07 p.m.: The actor playing Michael Behe has his voice and delivery down pretty well, but without the usual smirk. I wonder if Behe smirked through his testimony — anybody know? Maybe the ID folks would have been better off to hire an actor to play Behe.

8:10 p.m.: Behe’s irreducibly complex stuff, and bacterial flagella: Has anybody ever asked Behe why an intelligent designer wouldn’t have used a screw propeller, which would be more efficient than a flagellum? Is the designer irreducibly dense, too?

8:55 p.m.: IDists and other creationists won’t like the program. It was fair. In two hours, NOVA offers clear understanding of what happened at the trial, and to people who listen, it tells why evolution came out on top.

Great program. How many will it sway?

In the interim comes word that Kenneth Miller will be in Dallas day-after-tomorrow from something called “Pegasus News Service.” Since Pegasus is the flying horse logo of the old Magnolia Petroleum Company, which was adopted by Dallas-based Mobil (before Exxon-Mobil), it’s clearly a Dallas-based news group. Maybe SMU related. Here are the details of Miller’s visit:

On Thursday, Nov. 15 at 5 p.m. in the Hughes-Trigg Student Center Ballroom on the campus of Southern Methodist University, Kenneth R. Miller will lecture on the subject of science and faith in America, and how the falling out of favor of “intelligent design” will affect our understanding of science as a tool for understanding our world. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Only one Scout meeting conflicting . . . can I make it?

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Resources

6 Comments | Evolution, History, Intelligent Design, Junk science, Jurisprudence, Law, Public education, Voodoo science | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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