Texas State Board Evolves

Evolution sometimes happens right before our eyes. There's been a coup d'etat of sorts in Texas.

The San Antonio Express-News reports ("Senate ousts creationist as head of state ed board") that the Texas State Senate, in an all-too-rare rebuff of Governor Rick Perry, has removed the State Board of Education chairman who has led the charge against evolution in the Lone Star State.

In a rare rejection of an appointment from the governor, the Senate on Thursday ousted Don McLeroy as chairman of the State Board of Education as his supporters claimed the Bryan dentist was the victim of his strong religious beliefs.

McLeroy is a devout Christian who believes in creationism and the notion that the Earth is about 6,000 years old. He has steadfastly argued that Texas students should be taught the weaknesses of evolution.

Background here and here.

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Evolution Lives

On a tie vote, it appears that the creationists on the Texas State Board of Education failed in their attempt to prevent the teaching of evolution in science classes. However, they managed to make some mischief, requiring science teachers to evaluate critically a variety of scientific principles like the Big Bang, for example.

Here is additional background, as reported here on Wednesday ("Will Darwin Take It On The Chin In Texas?").

The New York Times ("Defeat And Some Success For Texas Evolution Foes") and the Dallas Morning News ("Split vote upholds Texas education board ruling to ax evolution 'strengths and weaknesses' rule") have the full story.

Board members deadlocked 7-7 on a motion to restore a longtime curriculum rule that "strengths and weaknesses" of all scientific theories – notably Charles Darwin's theory of evolution – be covered in science classes and textbooks for those subjects.

The tie vote upheld a preliminary decision by the board in January to delete the strengths-and-weaknesses rule in the new curriculum standards for science classes that will be in force for the next decade. That decision, if finalized in a last vote today, changes 20 years of Texas education policy.

Because the standards spell out what must be covered in textbooks, science educators and publishers have been monitoring the Texas debate closely. As one of the largest textbook purchasers in the nation, Texas influences what is sold in other states.

Now if they could only agree on how old the earth really is.

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Will Darwin Take It On The Chin in Texas?

The Washington Post editorial page ('Strengths and Weaknesses') weighs in on the creationism debate in the Lone Star State.

Starting today, the state's board of education will consider whether the phrase "strengths and weaknesses" should remain deleted from the state's science standards. Debating strengths and weaknesses of various scientific theories might sound reasonable until you learn that those are supportive buzzwords for people who doubt evolution and want creationism taught in the classroom.

The force behind restoring the "strengths and weaknesses" language, which was stripped from the science standards in January after two decades, is Don McLeroy. He's the chairman of the State Board of Education. He is also a "young earth creationist" who believes the Earth was created by God no more than 10,000 years ago. Never mind plenty of scientific evidence that the planet has been around for a few billion years. The scary thing is that what's happening in Texas is by no means isolated.

So, in a state of 24 million people, this Mr. McLeroy is the best candidate that Republican Governor Rick Perry could find for the job of chair of the State Board of Education? Scary. Purposefully scary, I'll bet.

For more background, see here (6/3/08), here (7/21/08), here (1/22/09), and here (1/23/09).

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A Win for Science

The Texas State Board of Education yesterday voted down an attempt to weaken the teaching of evolution in public school science classrooms. Read the full account in the Dallas Morning News.

In a major defeat for social conservatives, a sharply divided State Board of Education voted Thursday to abandon a longtime state requirement that high school science teachers cover what some critics consider to be "weaknesses" in the theory of evolution.

Under the science curriculum standards recommended by a panel of science educators and tentatively adopted by the board, biology teachers and biology textbooks would no longer have to cover the "strengths and weaknesses" of Charles Darwin's theory that man evolved from lower forms of life.

See yesterday's post ("Onward, Christian Soldiers!") on this some topic - prior to the Board's vote.

Winners: Science, Students, Teachers

Losers: Governor Rick Perry, Social Conservatives

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Onward, Christian Soldiers!

Today's New York Times ("In Texas, a Line in the Curriculum Revives Evolution Debate") reports on attempts to discredit evolution iin the Lone Star State.

No longer do religious conservatives employ an in-your-face strategy, but take a craftier approach to undermining science. In Texas, it involves taking advantage of a passage in the state curriculum that requires students to critique the "strengths and weaknesses" of scientific theories. From there, they attempt to bring religious teachings into public school science classrooms.

In the past, the conservatives on the education board have lacked the votes to change textbooks. This year, both sides say, the final vote, in March, is likely to be close.

Even as federal courts have banned the teaching of creationism and intelligent design in biology courses, social conservatives have gained 7 of 15 seats on the Texas board in recent years, and they enjoy the strong support of Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican.

The chairman of the board, Dr. Don McLeroy, a dentist, pushed in 2003 for a more skeptical version of evolution to be presented in the state’s textbooks, but could not get a majority to vote with him. Dr. McLeroy has said he does not believe in Darwin’s theory and thinks that Earth’s appearance is a recent geologic event, thousands of years old, not 4.5 billion as scientists contend.

On the surface, the debate centers on a passage in the state’s curriculum that requires students to critique all scientific theories, exploring “the strengths and weaknesses” of each. Texas has stuck to that same standard for 20 years, having originally passed it to please religious conservatives. In practice, teachers rarely pay attention to it.

This year, however, a panel of teachers assigned to revise the curriculum proposed dropping those words, urging students instead to “analyze and evaluate scientific explanations using empirical evidence.”

Scientists and advocates for religious freedom say the battle over the curriculum is the tip of a spear. Social conservatives, the critics argue, have tried to use the “strengths and weaknesses” standard to justify exposing students to religious objections in the guise of scientific discourse.

“The phrase ‘strengths and weaknesses’ has been spread nationally as a slogan to bring creationism in through the back door,” said Eugenie C. Scott of the National Center for Science in Education, a California group that opposes watering down evolution in biology classes.

In my last post, I gave kudos to Alabama Governor Bob Riley, a Republican, for his leadership on teacher quality. In this post, let me aim barbs at Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry for appointing the likes of Dr. McLeroy to public office. As Bugs Bunny might say, "What a maroon!" That goes for both of them.

Image courtesy of popsucker.net.

Background:

7/21/2008: Praise Jesus (In Public Schools)

6/3/2008: "NY Times: "Opponents of Evolution Are Adopting New Strategy"

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Praise Jesus (in Public Schools)

As reported in the Houston Chronicle, the Texas State Legislature passed and the Texas State Board of Education approved an elective high school Bible course with no standards because they might be "too difficult to write". Critics say the law is headed for the courts.

"I predict we're headed for a constitutional train wreck," said Mark Chancey, chairman of the religious studies department at Southern Methodist University. "The people who suffer will be the educators and the students, and the people who will foot the bill will be us the taxpayers."

Public school Bible classes can be wonderfully enriching, he said, but teachers need resources and specific guidelines.

"Instead, the state board of education is sending them into a minefield without a map," Chancey said.

Here's what the Austin American-Statesman had to say.

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Moving east .... Not to be outdone, last month the Louisiana State Legislature and Governor Bobby Jindal approved a law that suggests that evolution is open to debate. It encourages students to "analyze," "critique," and "review" scientific topics including evolution and global warming and instructs the State Board of Education to "allow and assist" (aid and abet?) teachers who want to question such science through "supplemental materials". The bill was supported by the pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute.

The New York Times editorialized about this law last month.

The new bill doesn’t mention either creationism or its close cousin, intelligent design. It explicitly disavows any intent to promote a religious doctrine. It doesn’t try to ban Darwin from the classroom or order schools to do anything. It simply requires the state board of education, if asked by local school districts, to help create an environment that promotes “critical thinking” and “objective discussion” about not only evolution and the origins of life but also about global warming and human cloning, two other bêtes noires of the right. Teachers would be required to teach the standard textbook but could use supplementary materials to critique it.

That may seem harmless. But it would have the pernicious effect of implying that evolution is only weakly supported and that there are valid competing scientific theories when there are not. In school districts foolish enough to head down this path, the students will likely emerge with a shakier understanding of science.

Ed Week's Curriculum Matters blog provides additional background.

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I'm not sure what's worse, unstructured Bible classes funded by taxpayer dollars or a clever approach to undermining scientific principles in the classroom. What a choice.

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NY Times: "Opponents of Evolution Are Adopting New Strategy"

An article in Wednesday's New York Times discusses the next stage in the war against evolution. This next battle comes courtesy of the state of Texas. Yep, they're getting crafty down yonder by suggesting that there are "strengths and weaknesses" to Darwinian theory.

Now a battle looms in Texas over science textbooks that teach evolution, and the wrestle for control seizes on three words. None of them are “creationism” or “intelligent design” or even “creator.”

The words are “strengths and weaknesses.”

Starting this summer, the state education board will determine the curriculum for the next decade and decide whether the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution should be taught. The benign-sounding phrase, some argue, is a reasonable effort at balance. But critics say it is a new strategy taking shape across the nation to undermine the teaching of evolution, a way for students to hear religious objections under the heading of scientific discourse.

Already, legislators in a half-dozen states — Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri and South Carolina — have tried to require that classrooms be open to “views about the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory,” according to a petition from the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based strategic center of the intelligent design movement.

The “strengths and weaknesses” language was slipped into the curriculum standards in Texas to appease creationists when the State Board of Education first mandated the teaching of evolution in the late 1980s. It has had little effect because evolution skeptics have not had enough power on the education board to win the argument that textbooks do not adequately cover the weaknesses of evolution.

Yet even as courts steadily prohibited the outright teaching of creationism and intelligent design, creationists on the Texas board grew to a near majority. Seven of 15 members subscribe to the notion of intelligent design, and they have the blessings of Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican.

What happens in Texas does not stay in Texas: the state is one of the country’s biggest buyers of textbooks, and publishers are loath to produce different versions of the same material. The ideas that work their way into education here will surface in classrooms throughout the country.

Related posts:

• 5/20/2008
  
• 4/29/2008
  

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Creationism Redux -- We're Not in Kansas Anymore

Last month, I took aim at Florida and Kansas for prostelyzing through science standards.

Today the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the standards front is not the only place where the battle between creationism and evolution is waged. It is also waged in the classroom. According to a recent Penn State survey, one in eight high school biology teachers report teaching creationism as "a valid, scientific alternative" to evolution. Further, one in six believe that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so."

Yikes. I wonder if evolution is taught in theology classes?

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