Texas education board approves science standards (Update)
March 27, 2009 By APRIL CASTRO , Associated Press Writer
Member Ray Nunez, left, from El Paso, talks with Rick Agosto, right, from San Antonio, during a meeting of the State Board of Education Thursday, March 26, 2009, in Austin, Texas. Texas science teachers will no longer be required to teach weaknesses of scientific theory, including evolution, under new curriculum standards tentatively adopted by the Board Thursday. (AP Photo/Harry Cabluck)
(AP) -- Texas will no longer require educators to teach weaknesses of all scientific theories, including evolution.
The requirements were approved Friday by the State Board of Education in a 13-2 vote adopting new state science curriculum standards that will be in place for the next decade.
In a compromise plan, teachers will be required to have students scrutinze "all sides" of scientific theories, a move criticized by evolution proponents.
The vote caps a week of impassioned debate that had scientists, teachers and textbook publishers from around the country focused on Texas.
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Texas science teachers will no longer be required to teach weaknesses of scientific theory, including evolution, under new curriculum standards tentatively adopted by the State Board of Education on Thursday.
Supporters of evolution hailed the vote but were critical of amendments adopted by the board that they said could create new paths to teaching creationism and the similar theory of intelligent design in public schools.
If given final approval in a vote expected Friday, the new standards will drop a 20-year-old rule that requires both "strengths and weaknesses" of all scientific theories to be taught. Critics say the requirement is used to undermine the theory of evolution in favor of religious teachings.
The new standards, which would be in place for the next decade, govern what appears on standardized tests and material published in textbooks. As one of the largest textbook purchasers in the nation, Texas has significant influence over the content of books marketed across the country.
"Publishers are waiting to hear what to put in their textbooks," said Dan Quinn, a spokesman for the watchdog group Texas Freedom Network.
In approving a handful of amendments Thursday, the board "slammed the door on creationism, then ran around the house opening up all the windows to let it in another way," Quinn said. "We hope the vote tomorrow will reverse a lot of that."
In one amendment, the board agreed to require high school biology students to "analyze and evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency of natural selection to explain the complexity of the cell."
Board member Don McLeroy said his amendment was intended "to account for that amazing complexity. I think it's a standard that makes it honest with our children."
Federal courts have ruled against teaching public schools teaching creationism and intelligent design, which holds that life is so complex that it must have come from an intelligent higher power.
©2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Mar 26, 2009 |
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These are students, not scientists. There is too much information to teach in just a few years to get bogged down in second-guessing every theory. Are we going to have them test the Plum-Pudding model of the atom and then test the modern one? Of course not - it would be a very poor use of their time. They should be taught, "This model is wrong. Who can tell me which poor assumptions led to this faulty conclusion?"
As above, "this is wrong, and this is why." I agree that it's good to teach them critical thinking, as long as it is made explicitly clear which is the GOOD thinking and which the BAD. Otherwise they only learn to be uneasy, distrustful, and indecisive. Critical thinking skills are only useful inasmuch as they lead to better decisions.
Who suggested teaching blind acceptance? Silly strawman.
If an advocate can't argue falsifiability, pro or con, then they should remain silent.
Pappa Joe, and Mao would be so proud of all you good little totalitarian robots.
So when do the firing squads and marching people to camps and ovens come...next year? No matter, I'm sure you'll all be there with your marshmallows patting each other on the back at the next book burning party until then.
Does this article have something to do with atheists or is it that you can't help exercise your bigot fetish and troll like a moron on every thread you post on?
Quite hysterical that you took the bait too...you're just too easy.
Moron.
Good, because this page is filled with enough of that already from you.
Oh and it's DRIVEL genius...not dribble. Dribble is what the teachers had to wipe off the corner of your mouth when you were busy in the corner with the rest of the kids who couldn't manage to color in the lines either.
Now run back to wiping that dribble off your mouth *snicker*
What if someone was talking about a race of aliens instead of "God"? Presto, you have a falsifiable theory.
Sorry you're bias is clear, it's quite safe to disregard anything you have to say on the subject from here on out...
You are a brain dead moron.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. "
It's a con game, an elaborate myth created by old diseased men to keep us permantly believing if we make the slightest mistake we're going to hell. To keep our noses permantly implanted on the altar bench. They want us to believe even in our own history that every founding father was a tried and true believer believed in god and gave 10% of there income on Sunday's and didn't drink or smoke tobacco. It's revisionist history and I'm sick of it. Our founding father's had a wide range of diverse beliefs and some didn't even believe in god at all. That's why this country was created and why we have the first admendment "FIRST" Like I said anything different is an attempt by the religious right to write(pun can be intended if you will) revisionist history. "I say let these fundamentally theocratic states their full reign, and let see how true their religious beliefs fare in shaping or destroying the world." This has already happened in history why Rome fell and why we had the crusades and inquistions and why the founding fathers fled europe and england because of religious persecution.
That's awesome. Now, whenever I submit an essay at any school in Texas, regarding evolution and its scientific rigour, I can wax poetic about it for as long as I like and make the last sentence of the essay;
"The creationist proposition supplies no evidence and thus does not deserve scrutiny".
I thought the Constitution of the United States of America applied to the Federal Government and its operation? Perhaps you should read it again and then contemplate, compare and contrast the meanings of the words and phrases "Congress", "School Board", "law", "establishment of religion" and "curriculum standards".
Never mind enormous quantities of "impossible" evidence to the contrary like quantised extra-galactic red-shifts or the polarity-sensitive UV vision of the Mantis Shrimp.
They must think by attacking knowledge and truth they can get rid of it and return to the ideal gullible moronic state where figments of the imagination are as real as anything else and spirits and spells and sacrifices to their jesus god are all the rage.
These twisted lying freaks have to be stopped, they've wasted resources and generations for too long. They are the enemies of truth and pedlars of lies and deception.
Appropriately discussable in the religious context,
http://www.i-slam...nsky.htm
http://www.i-slam...nsky.htm
Actually evolution is the process of adaptation to change which is seen in the world all around us. It's not a religion for the following reasons
a) It's true
Religion is a massive waste of time perpetrated by liars and morons.
I hope your tax returns aren't as false as your beliefs, can you add?
The links that I have just listed, suffice to point out that evolution would count in the lieful category.
Evolutionists fool their followers, with pretenses of facticity. Fallacies abound.
http://www.i-slam...nsky.htm
http://www.i-slam...nsky.htm
(BTW, while I'm to publish another article (next time, to debunk NAS/Ayala propaganda), a teaser is that, they take the fossils in the rock strata, as evidence for evolution. They neglect that, there is no continuity there, exactly in that rock records. Have species taken a leave, to do their punctuation-there-to-find-the-equilibrium-from-elsewhere? :-)) That was their "best evidence?" So far about evolutionism.)
Besides, after all that, the question will return to debunk the NAS point. That is, if evolution is so baseless, then how could they be so insistent to have that "understood" as if the sine-qua-non of the science class. If that were so, then upon debunking the evolutionism, are we to get rid of all of their scientific findings, too?
(Hint: They were lieful with their habit of appending evolutionistic stories, to scientific findings. Thus, trimming will suffice. Science will be better, without evolutionism.)
BTW
Lieful, not a word
Facticity, not a word
"exactly in that rock records", not a valid construction
"sine-qua-non", has been deemed an unsafe sexual practice by the surgeon general
You, by your very existence, cast more doubt over Evolution than any argument I've ever encountered. Keep up the workageitude.
What is the construction rule for your new word "workageitude" ? Trying to be funny? You are there.
I love Jesus (a.s.), but as a muslim. (I'm not christian.)
http://www.imame....esus.htm
By the way, the profanity of nilbud is his/her trouble.
In response, though, maybe I should not have written that word "lieful" because that is the faith of evolutionists. Maybe, they truly believe in what they fancy. (But I'm justifiable (if I would like to), because evolutionists commit such an array of fallacies (in the name of (supposedly) "fact"), that, how might I know whether they truly lie constantly or stupid somehow?)