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."
Of course not. That's why we have a government that (theoretically) recognizes our inherent rights and protects them.
"The fittest survive" is not a morality. It is an observation of how things work in the natural world. Humans--being the fittest critters on this tiny rock--have advanced to the point where we are able to invest extra resources towards the survival of our least fit.
Survival of the fittest is only applicable when environmental pressures are such that survival is not guaranteed. This does not apply to most of Western civilization, although I think I could make a very successful case that the "Law of the Jungle" still takes a high toll in much of the Third World (and probably in some areas of the inner cities as well).
While mathematicians consider infinity to be rather boring, my impression is that most physicists are distinctly uncomfortable with the idea of infinity.
Inherent rights? Where do we get them from? :-)
"Inherent" means they are part and parcel of being human and are not "from" anywhere or anyone.
It can't be very difficult for someone who has surveyed all Nobel Prize winning work and has declared that it all disproves evolution. An intellect of such sweeping power should be able to give us his answer. HOW OLD IS THE EARTH?.
Good question. If I were well versed in a particular science, such as biology or chemistry, and were a teacher in the public schools, I would first see to it that any textbook used in my class were selected on the basis of its acceptance of open-inquiry. Textbooks that proclaim "billions of years ago yadayadayada" without interjecting qualifiers are misleading, and would either be discarded from consideration or edited, or pointed out as such.
As the given discipline runs its course making use of scientific methods, I might introduce questions that allow the student to explain their observations in both naturalist and creationist terms, or whichever they might prefer. If a student would happen to launch into a sermon exhorting me to repent of my beer drinking ways, I would simply have to remaind that student that God created beer, too, and carry one with the discipline the class is intened to explore.
As far as I can see, evolutionists are on solid ground in maintaining that facts and observations should be the main fare in science classes. At the same time, they should be willing to allow what they call "facts and observations" to be challenged by other ways of explaining them. I mean, when even our best scientists are still uncertain of how to fully comprehend such ubiquities as light, energy, and time, it does little good to snag on creationism as if it will jump out of the bushes and strangle objective realties.
It would serve no purpose to continually launch into the merits or lack thereof of either creationist (why belabor the obvious?) or evolutionist assumptions. I doubt there are many science teachers who hold the evolutionist view and continually bash their students over the head with it. It does no good to the learning process and does not change or advance the facts.
So, you're absolutely right. Science classes should not be made a platform for creationist sermonizing, any more than they should be made platforms for evolutionist atheistic tendencies.
Not at all. Your contributions to the discussion are taken along with the other posts and are much appreciated. Just as you have not read all of my posts closely and responded to each point, I have not read every post on this thread and responded in kind, though it may seem like it.
". . . intelligent design is NOT science. If something claims that godidit, then it is NOT science."
Science would not be able to function if there were no such thing as design. Can we at least agree on that?
Design could neither exist nor be comprehended unless there were such thing as intelligence. Can we agree on that?
The next step would be to infer something about that intelligence, and I think this is where the hang up is. Does intelligence necessarily carry the baggage of "God." I don't think one is forced to go there logically, but I certainly do not count it as crazy or unreasonable that throughout the history of mankind this has been assumed. The sheer amount and intricacy of design in the world makes that kind of assumption very reasonable.
But the scientific method is based on evidence. As creationism currently has no evidence to support it, and since as a teacher you would have been charged with instructing the students, you would be remiss in not insisting that the students present their case based on evidence, and not unsupported assumption.
Unless of course your students happened to observe an act of miraculous creation, whereupon creationist terms would be appropriate.
But barring that special case, why would you allow a student to describe, say, the chemical reaction which turns hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide into salt and water in creationist terms?
Good point. Do you think they are inherent?
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