Posted on 07/09/2006 4:41:41 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
State Board of Education panel may look at guidelines for classroom discussion of science controversies
Less than five months after evolution won a round in the State Board of Education, some board members want to reopen the debate.
Colleen Grady, a board member from the Cleveland suburb of Strongsville, wants to add guidelines to the state science standards for teaching on such topics as evolution, global warming, stem-cell research and cloning.
Grady said she views her proposal as a compromise to ensure that differing views are considered when teaching such hot-button issues.
"We would provide a template so schools would be comfortable discussing controversial issues," she said last week.
Grady sits on the boards Achievement Committee, which is expected to discuss the proposal when it meets Monday in Columbus. A vote on whether to recommend the proposal to the full board is not scheduled but possible.
Talk of revisiting the issue has raised concern among scientists who have long fought efforts that they say undermine Darwins theory of evolution. Now, they argue, some board members want to subject other areas of science to heightened scrutiny.
"This is so transparent," said Steve Rissing, a biology professor at Ohio State University. "These are not controversial areas of science."
In February, the board voted 11-4 to eliminate portions of curriculum guidelines for 10 th-grade science and an accompanying lesson plan calling for the critical analysis of evolution.
Critics argued that "critical analysis of evolution" was tantamount to calling for the teaching of creationism or intelligent design, the notion that some life forms are so complex that a higher intelligence, maybe God, had to be involved. Both, they argue, are religious beliefs unsuitable for the science classroom.
Committee co-chairman Jim Craig, of Canton, said he was aware of recent discussions of the issue, but nobody has shown him a proposal.
Getting a majority of committee members to agree on any recommendation will be difficult, he said. While Grady and a few others are pushing her proposal, others on the committee say that no more changes are necessary.
"I dont think either side wants to get back to the point where it was," Craig said, referring to two meetings this year that were dominated by sometimes-bitter debate.
Deborah Owens Fink, a board member from Richfield who is supporting Gradys proposal, said modifying existing language should be less controversial than ideas the board has considered in the past.
Specifically, Grady proposes taking existing language in 10 th-grade science standards "Describe that scientists may disagree about explanations of phenomena, about interpretation of data or about the value of rival theories, but they do agree that questioning response to criticism and open communications are integral to the process of science." and adding to it: "Discuss and be able to apply this in the following areas: global warning; evolutionary theory; emerging technologies and how they may impact society, e.g. cloning or stem-cell research."
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1. Evolution is good science and doesn't belong on that list (my position).2. Global warming is true and Gore is a genius! (flaming leftist's position).
3. All those topics are rock-solid science! (leftist who just might know some biology)
4. All science is eeeeevilllll!!! (total retard's position)
Aw hell! Why not go-for-broke and throw other controversial topics in their like Gravity. [LOL]
But such topics require analysis at two levels: first, the validity of the underlying science. Here, evolution is a hands-down winner. Second, there are the political issues that can swirl around such knowledge and its potential applications. That's a whole different thing. Can't really lump them all together. It becomes very confusing when everything's tossed into one pot, and I suspect the confusion isn't an accident.
The author of the proposal probably lost last time around while attacking evolution alone, and now is apparently doing a Samson play -- taking down the whole temple.
hee,hee,hee
"1. Evolution is good science and doesn't belong on that list (my position)."
Do you belong to the Flat Earth Society as well??
Hmmmmmmm...........
Maybe your right. I know this may 'date' me but I seem to remember a course I took in High School that included a section dealing with the 'Domino Theory' and Vietnam.
Be careful not to throw out the baby with the bath water. A much better education on scientific method would be a good thing in every way.
This is really begining to make me sick. I'm trying to be calm. The enemy within has been doing this with American History since I started school in the fifties. Now These COMMUNISTS want to do it with science too. The problem that I'm so upset with is that the COMMUNIST are constantly slanting what they want people to learn not hat the truth really is. I've learned more since I have been out of school about American History than I ever learned in school. Teach what science is then let people look into all the slants that are out there. Some factions are good and some are bad. Parents need to start watching what their children are being taught that they are being made to pay for.
It is a part of the political environment that they will very soon be voting citizens in. Having a very critical eye of what is, and what isn't good scientific approach is very important. I don't see a need to mention any particular subject though.
As I've said before, I think the greatest harm to science has been done by the lumping of pseudo-sciences in with hard science, and the propensity of scientists to engage in politics via their scientific credentials. When geologists sign petitions on global warming or nuclear disarmament, they shouldn't demand to be treated as experts. Indeed, the loss of credibility goes far beyond any such petition, as the entire communities objectivity gets put into question. I think ID, as well as the super-vitamins on TV, prosper from this type of backlash. Scientists should spend a little time working on their own house, as well as protecting from outside.
Apples versus mashed potatoes.
No one is claiming that stem cells don't exist or that cloning can't happen. The arguments about both are ethical and moral.
Global warming is more that one question
1. Is it happening? ... a scientific question, simply an evaluation of the data (my take is proabably, my geo prof back in the 50's predicted it)
2. What are the causes? ...another scientific question, actively under study
3. Should we care, and if so, how? ...a political and ethical question.
And, of course, evolution is established science.
"What any of that has to do with Darwinian fictions is beyond me, however."
What fictions?
"They aren't THAT bad... yet."
You said that I didn't. These Communists did it with History and now there doing it with Science.
....I do know that South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia fell immediately to Communism as soon as the Dim's reneged on our agreements to support the South with military hardware and funding.....
Exactly what the Domino Theory warned.
My point was that controversies have their place in a certain setting.
....Darwinian fictions....
This was NOT my point.
However, I would be in favor of teaching a class on "Current Topical Controversies" if it included "UFOs, the Pre-Copernican Earth-Centered Universe, believers of the Cluthu Mithos of HPLovecraft, Scientology, AND the beliefs of those whaky Creationists/IDers that are attempting to destroy Conservatism and websites such as FR by their continual posting and pushing of their crap".
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