Posted on 12/11/2002 6:28:08 AM PST by A2J
By WILL SENTELL
wsentell@theadvocate.com
Capitol news bureau
High school biology textbooks would include a disclaimer that evolution is only a theory under a change approved Tuesday by a committee of the state's top school board.
If the disclaimer wins final approval, it would apparently make Louisiana just the second state in the nation with such a provision. The other is Alabama, which is the model for the disclaimer backers want in Louisiana.
Alabama approved its policy six or seven years ago after extensive controversy that included questions over the religious overtones of the issue.
The change approved Tuesday requires Louisiana education officials to check on details for getting publishers to add the disclaimer to biology textbooks.
It won approval in the board's Student and School Standards/ Instruction Committee after a sometimes contentious session.
"I don't believe I evolved from some primate," said Jim Stafford, a board member from Monroe. Stafford said evolution should be offered as a theory, not fact.
Whether the proposal will win approval by the full state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education on Thursday is unclear.
Paul Pastorek of New Orleans, president of the board, said he will oppose the addition.
"I am not prepared to go back to the Dark Ages," Pastorek said.
"I don't think state boards should dictate editorial content of school textbooks," he said. "We shouldn't be involved with that."
Donna Contois of Metairie, chairwoman of the committee that approved the change, said afterward she could not say whether it will win approval by the full board.
The disclaimer under consideration says the theory of evolution "still leaves many unanswered questions about the origin of life.
"Study hard and keep an open mind," it says. "Someday you may contribute to the theories of how living things appeared on earth."
Backers say the addition would be inserted in the front of biology textbooks used by students in grades 9-12, possibly next fall.
The issue surfaced when a committee of the board prepared to approve dozens of textbooks used by both public and nonpublic schools. The list was recommended by a separate panel that reviews textbooks every seven years.
A handful of citizens, one armed with a copy of Charles Darwin's "Origin of the Species," complained that biology textbooks used now are one-sided in promoting evolution uncritically and are riddled with factual errors.
"If we give them all the facts to make up their mind, we have educated them," Darrell White of Baton Rouge said of students. "Otherwise we have indoctrinated them."
Darwin wrote that individuals with certain characteristics enjoy an edge over their peers and life forms developed gradually millions of years ago.
Backers bristled at suggestions that they favor the teaching of creationism, which says that life began about 6,000 years ago in a process described in the Bible's Book of Genesis.
White said he is the father of seven children, including a 10th-grader at a public high school in Baton Rouge.
He said he reviewed 21 science textbooks for use by middle and high school students. White called Darwin's book "racist and sexist" and said students are entitled to know more about controversy that swirls around the theory.
"If nothing else, put a disclaimer in the front of the textbooks," White said.
John Oller Jr., a professor at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, also criticized the accuracy of science textbooks under review. Oller said he was appearing on behalf of the Louisiana Family Forum, a Christian lobbying group.
Oller said the state should force publishers to offer alternatives, correct mistakes in textbooks and fill in gaps in science teachings. "We are talking about major falsehoods that should be addressed," he said.
Linda Johnson of Plaquemine, a member of the board, said she supports the change. Johnson said the new message of evolution "will encourage students to go after the facts."
You can read my previous response to your question, .... or not. Your choice; it's in your reply queue.
I'll give you the point about the grammar.
You mean we agree on something! Hey, that makes TWO things we can agree on: the grammar, and getting rid of public education.
Maybe we should should quit while we're severe agreement with each other.....
;-)
Fair enough. Good night, Longshadow. :-)
I'll give some consideration to this thought the day one of my nephews or nieces comes home from school and gives me a marginally correct accounting of the currently accepted results.
Likewise. May all your dreams contain noun phrases.
;-)
Well, actually, in some cases which have now passed constitutional muster, you are. Some municipalities and counties have established 4th degree assault, which amounts to causing undue annoyance. You may tell me something once, politely. You may not pursue me down the street exercising your freedom of speech in my vicinity for a half-hour.
Of course it can, else we would not be able to build up knowledge by 'piling on' one scientific theory upon another. If nothing were true, then the scientific advances we have seen the last two centuries would have been totally impossible. You cannot build castles on sand, but you can build great edificices upon scientific knowledge.
This silly know-nothingism is a complete denial of reality.
LOLOL! This thread may go down in Junior's archives as the single most productive discussion.
Numerous troubling issues were thoroughly analyzed and I truly believe we all understand - and respect - one another's positions much better than when we started.
Intelligent Design Creationism
You are blessed to have a child asleep on you… Man, I miss that!
Please explain your point here deeper. I don't get where I am supposed to go with that. What realm do emotions belong to?
What you say is correct. Evolution is sort of the keystone of the materialist/atheist axis of evil. This axis includes abiogenesis and random universe theory. It seeks to replace God with 'natural forces' and 'random ordering' (no matter how silly such a thing sounds). All the members of this godless axis know that they must fight together against religion because they know that if God is admitted in any of these fields then all the theories in the axis of evil fall apart.
There's a limit to the approach or delivery, I agree. That's where tpaine was going as well. That's independent of the content. A sales-clerk pursuing me down the street for half an hour repeating the message "Thank you, please come again!", would be a menace or a nuisance.
This is rhetoric, not facts. Science can indeed deal with God as it has dealt with the Big Bang and with abiogenesis. Science can see that natural causes cannot explain a certain thing such as life or the order of the cosmos. Indeed, the problem science has is not with God, but with the skeptics who deny that there is such a thing as order in the Universe. It is disorder, randomness, fortuitousness, lack of causation, that are the enemies of science.
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