evolution & education

Forty-six percent of Americans believe that God created human beings within the last 10,000 years or so. Why that’s a worrying statistic.

It's bad enough that the State Board of Education has become a heavily politicized, dysfunctional embarrassment for Texas. Now religious-righters want control of the Texas Education Agency as well.

Both Andrew Sullivan and Kevin Drum are wrong, but I think Drum is infuriatingly wrong. The evolution statistic does have epic significance. If kids were graduating from high school unable to read or do basic arithmetic, we’d see that as a serious indictment of our educational system…and we’d be right to worry about our future as a technological society. That 46% of our citizens graduate with a complete denial of a most basic, fundamental fact about our world — that all of the sciences, not just biology, but physics, geology, chemistry, and astronomy concur that the planet is billions of years old — represents a massive failure of our educational system. In itself, it’s a small problem — it’s knowledge of one small detail. But as a symptom, it indicates a nation-wide problem.

TOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas is headed toward another debate over how evolution is taught in its public schools, with a State Board of Education member saying Friday that science standards under development are “very problematic” for describing the theory as a well-established, core scientific concept....

"I believe our usual counterargument goes something like this: “What controversy? That’s like saying there’s a controversy over whether the Roman Empire existed!” I think that’s a flawed counterargument, and here’s why: It doesn’t fully capture the specific nature of the creationism argument. It doesn’t capture that there is tepid public acceptance but overwhelming acceptance of evolution among biologists. That is, in the case of evolution, there is *actual* controversy. It just doesn’t exist between people who are educated on the topic."

"I too worry that polarizing things does lead to a religion-or-science-and-take-no-hostages kind of thinking. And whatever the Constitution may say and whatever previous interpretations may have been, I fear that the present Supreme Court might take this as an excuse – if indeed they even look for excuses – to allow some form of biblical literalism into biology classes."

By all means criticize TE for glopping up a perfectly good scientific theory with a lot of unnecessary theological gobbledy-gook. Just remember that on the issue of science education they are on the side of the angels, and, indeed, are necessary allies in the fight against creationism. Describing them with the same term we use for anti-science, right-wing religious zealots is not helpful...

"Once, the Monkey Bill would have been regarded as only a local curiosity. But lunatic legislation no longer occurs in a vacuum. Gun laws like Stand Your Ground, the new spate of voter-ID laws, laws that restrict immigration and abortion or those that attempt to resurrect school prayer are derived, often word for word, from model legislation issued by ideological think tanks."

"Concerns surrounding this bill cannot be overstated. Indeed, HB 368 does not even purport to improve science education – it practically acknowledges that its purpose is to discredit scientific theories. HB 368, in fact, significantly changes Tennessee’s science curriculum—it calls into question the veracity of the entire discipline. Arguments that students should learn about “scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories” are unwarranted based on the overwhelming evidence that supports such theories,[2] and will only harm students’ education. This legislation, which perpetuates the teaching of non-science with a seemingly neutral approach, allows creationists to continue to make unfounded attacks against evolution."