Posted on 09/15/2015 9:17:21 AM PDT by Enlightened1
Alabama is updating its decade-old science standards to require that students understand evolution and learn about climate change, topics that can still be controversial in the Bible Belt state.
Educators say the new rules — part of a major change that includes more experimentation and hands-on instruction and less lecturing — don't require that students believe in evolution or accept the idea that climate is changing globally.
But public school students will be required for the first time to understand the theory of evolution. And teachers will be required to address climate change, which wasn't a focus the last time the state set science standards in 2005.
The new standards take effect in 2016 after being unanimously approved by the Republican-controlled Alabama State Board of Education on Thursday.
No one spoke against the new standards when they were discussed at a board meeting in August, but supporters praised them as a step forward for the state.
A 40-member committee that developed the new course of study included people with "very strong religious beliefs" who considered the state's faith traditions and worked together to develop the new guidelines, said Michal Robinson, science specialist for the state education agency.
"We still have to teach what the science is," Robinson said in an interview Friday. "If students want to go into a science field in college or beyond, they have to have a foundation."
The current state standard says students "should understand the nature of evolutionary theories," but such knowledge isn't required.
(Excerpt) Read more at al.com ...
Et tu Alabama?
There’s nothing controversial in the South (or anywhere else) about teaching the alternative views factually without spin. But the secularists usually can’t do that.
Climate change is continuous and natural. I think they mean the students will be exposed to liberal dogma they call “settled science”.
The semantic difference between “understanding” and “believing” tends to be lost on many a mind.
....and Roll Tide.
Incrementalism. It works.
That’s why it’s their game in their “press conferences” and what is called “news” on TV and the internet. Just the changes in Yahoo alone over the past few years are staggering.
It’s all-leftist, all the time, with an emphasis on what is spiked.
Absolutely. Teach Evolution, climate change, etc. but not to indoctrinate.
Sounds like State Sponsored Religion to me!
What are y’all votin’ for down there?
Teach climate change in the same lecture as galileo. Tech how people who stand against accepted scientific dogma get punished. I am cool with that
“Evolutionism” is a CAREFULLY protect “State” Religion. Just like “Climate Change”.
And teaching them about Global Warming advances this how?
“Educators say the new rules — part of a major change that includes more experimentation and hands-on instruction and less lecturing — don’t require that students believe in evolution or accept the idea that climate is changing globally”
Yeah, sure. In the future watch these kids get threatened with failing grades for not coming up with the conclusions the global warming crowd wants them to.
If they would learn the TRUTH about evolution—that we know precious little about its mechanisms-—that would be good indeed!!!!
Although the detailed intricacies of 2015 molecular biology and genomics are beyond the high school level, enough about them could be taught to at least many high school students, so that they can see what is going on. Teachers might even get some students interested in experimentation, and in going further with biology in college.
As for global warming—that is based on arcane computer models, which for example most meteorologists disbelieve. It is not as simple as saying “CO2 is a greenhouse gas”!!!!
Not if the SCIENCE, rather than the EMOTION of Climate Change & Evolution is taught.
Arm the kids with the FACTS to refute the MSM talking heads and Hollywood "save the planet" blather. Teach them to think, to understand the facts and science behind all the leftist mumbo-jumbo.
" The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. "
H. L. Mencken
He never met a seamstress along the way?
Oh, but they mean to indoctrinate. Slowly and from all angles.
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