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 ...
Well, that didn’t post very well...
I've no problem with Climate Change, in fact, I think that it would to our long-term benefit to understand its workings....
....too bad that the screams of "It's Settled Science!!" drown out the voices of rational people. Now, we'll likely never know.
Too bad, RD used to be entertaining and informative, not the propaganda rag it has become.
A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who breathes out lies will perish.
~Proverbs 19:9
But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.
~Revelation 21:8
Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.
~Romans 3:13
* “ 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 *
That’s a good one.
I like Mark Twain’s:
“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact”
I read RS occasionally, I can read everything even mildly interesting or relevant in a magazine in a few minutes. My Dad listens to NPR for much the same reasons... "The better to know my enemies." :-)
Right now, RS is thrashing about politically. They're trying to decide if Democrats are too conservative, or just not liberal enough. Looks like they're going to latch on to Bernie Sanders for Prez, but that still remains to be seen.
Bad news for Hillary! and Biden, I'd think. RS is more-or-less a mouthpiece for the young liberal vote that they'll need, badly.
That is their niche, like MTV used to be with rock the vote. Now the liberal indoctrination market seems to have shifted towards late night talk shows and Saturday Night Live TV audiences.
That being said, Reader's Digest was a magazine I subscribed to since 1972. They were at best apolitical leaning conservative. Now, they are just becoming another version of the usual newsstand time wasters, kind of a print version of yahoo "news". No credibility just a method to sell ads.
Global Warming on Free Republic here, here and here
Teach the kids to think and analyze, then ask respectful, logical questions of their teachers. Most of the indoctrination comes from the National Education Association, textbook publishers and state boards of education. The teacher is just trying to get through the day with an undisciplined rabble which has no concept of the need to become educated.
First step: Eliminate the NEA and it’s schemes.
Exile seems good.
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