Posted on 08/05/2005 5:22:08 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
The following is a statement by Antonia Cortese, executive vice president, American Federation of Teachers, on President Bush’s Comments that ’Intelligent Design’ should be taught in the nation’s science classrooms:
President Bush’s misinformed comments on "intelligent design" signal a huge step backward for science education in the United States. The president’s endorsement of such a discredited, nonscientific view is akin to suggesting that students be taught the "alternative theory" that the earth is flat or that the sun revolves around the earth. Intelligent design does not belong in the science classroom because it is not science.
By backing concepts that lack scientific merit, President Bush is undermining his own pledge to "leave no child behind." If students are to reach higher standards, and if they are to compete effectively with their international peers, they must be exposed to high-quality curricula that are research based and that reflect the best available knowledge in any given field. In the science classroom, that necessitates the study of evolution, one of the most important, powerful, and well-substantiated concepts in science.
Intelligent design has been repudiated by every respected scientific organization in the nation, including the National Academies, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Science Teachers Association. Even President Bush’s top science adviser, John H. Marburger III, has acknowledged that "evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology" and that "intelligent design is not a scientific concept." To preserve the integrity of science education, President Bush should heed this advice.
The AFT represents 1.3 million pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; paraprofessionals and other school-related personnel; higher education faculty and professional staff; nurses and healthcare workers; and federal, state and local government employees.
Your post sums this all up so succinctly. :o)
:]
And how did this stain get on my shirt? Let's see evolution explain that, huh?
If it can't answer questions outside of what it purports to "explain", it shouldn't be taught.
Could evolution have occurred without uranium? How about carbon? Why won't scientists answer these questions?
Why are some strep infections now penicillin resistant?
Why are there some nosocomial infections that are resistant to all known antibiotics? Do you know anyone who has gotten a staph infection after surgery?
I think people who say nu-ku-ler sound at least semi-ignorant. YMMV.
Ideally, we ought not even talk about this since education should be only a local matter.
But since I do, in fact, pay for schools nationwide to replace textbooks with names like "Bob" with new books containing presumably non-white names (a racist goal in itself, brought to you by Political Correctness), then I suppose this discussion is valid.
I'm glad somebody lives on the same planet as I do.
Did you perchance read John's conclusion at the end of the paper?
From the same paper.
"There is no difference between micro- and macroevolution except that genes between species usually diverge, while genes within species usually combine. The same processes that cause within-species evolution are responsible for above-species evolution, except that the processes that cause speciation include things that cannot happen to lesser groups, such as the evolution of different sexual apparatus (because, by definition, once organisms cannot interbreed, they are different species). "
"The idea that the origin of higher taxa, such as genera (canines versus felines, for example), requires something special is based on the misunderstanding of the way in which new phyla (lineages) arise. The two species that are the origin of canines and felines probably differed very little from their common ancestral species and each other. But once they were reproductively isolated from each other, they evolved more and more differences that they shared but the other lineages didn't. This is true of all lineages back to the first eukaryotic (nuclear) cell. Even the changes in the Cambrian explosion are of this kind, although some (eg, Gould 1989) think that the genomes (gene structures) of these early animals were not as tightly regulated as modern animals, and therefore had more freedom to change.
Here's to PC!
(I'm raising something to it, but it ain't a glass.)
President Carter drove me crazy when he misprounced it as well, but I'm thinking of President Bush, who pronounces it "NOO kyu ler".
Thanks for playing, though.
Sounds like a statement from NOW or NARAL to me. Evolutionism has been a huge step backward for science education in the United States for over a century.
You're probably more correct than you know.
Where parents have high expectations, generally the teachers also have high expectations and the students do very well, whether in public or private schools.
If parents don't value education, usually the children don't either, and they often end up in schools where the teachers have little time or energy left to teach, because it's all spent just trying to hold things together and keep the students relatively safe.
Many public schools are somewhere in between, but you are correct that education begins in the home, and if the majority of the parents in a community expect good teachers and a good education for their children, that's usually what they will get.
Sounds like a fundamentalist statement to me.
Yup.
"The scientific method depends on verifiable results, thus, the proof.
Nope. Non-falsified results.
"Your post is incoherent.
Nope.
Good for you. I have never seen an evolutionist engage in direct observation of a repeatable, testable demonstration of processes that account for the fixed diversity of biological entities observed throughout recorded history. Most of them argue from a static record as if it magically spells out the history of the universe, and they dare call it science. Evolutionism needs its ass kicked out of science class. Creationism does not need its ass kicked in.
Can I order room service in hell?
You were once a single celled organism too. Unless you believe a stork delivered you whole?
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