Posted on 09/11/2003 9:07:44 AM PDT by ThinkPlease
Two drafts of Minnesota's science standards circulated this week. The only difference? How they described the teaching of evolution.
The version the public didn't see included words like "might" and "possible" at strategic points that clearly cast doubt on the certainty of biological evolution.
When members of the citizens' panel that wrote the standards saw what was to be the final document, several saw the "mights" and "possibles" and protested that they didn't write the document that way and that the department made critical changes without telling the panel.
In the end, the committee got the language it wanted, giving evolution the full stamp of approval of the state as the way to teach science to all students in Minnesota's public schools.
The department said the confusion was a simple mistake caused by several versions floating around the agency, said spokesman Bill Walsh. He said it wasn't that Education Commissioner Cheri Pierson Yecke — who has acknowledged her belief in creationism — tried quietly to place her own personal misgivings about evolution into the standards.
"They weren't editing changes. It was just the wrong version that was put out,'' Walsh said. "When it was pointed out, we fixed it.''
The department released the different versions Monday. By Monday evening, after a flurry of e-mail exchanges among committee members, the final version was released. The confusion was repeated Tuesday when the department released the older version on its Web site, a problem that was quickly corrected.
"We don't know what went on. We are in the dark,'' said committee member Melanie Reap, an assistant professor at Winona State University. "But we are going to keep our eye out. This was a shock to us. We weren't expecting it.''
Another committee member, Brainerd High School teacher Nicole Harmer, said the panel wanted more time to review the final document in order to avoid such problems. She said she didn't know if the mistake over the versions was intentional or not.
"The jury is still out,'' she said. "But I'm a little frustrated there weren't tighter controls over the versions used. We should have been granted more time.''
The confusion over the versions adds fodder to the argument that the new draft versions of science and social studies standards are too politically charged, said Rep. Jim Davnie, DFL-Minneapolis, a middle-school teacher and a member of the House Education Policy Committee.
"I'm increasingly seeing these new standards as statements of values. My problem is, they are values skewed in one direction,'' Davnie said. "These standards seem to be moving away from a mainstream Minnesota idea of what students should know.''
The citizens committee submitted its final draft to the Department of Education in late August. Members said it was largely a consensus document, even on the volatile issue of evolution. Yecke told members she would make final changes for punctuation and cosmetic reasons, Walsh said. The agency released its version Friday to committee members, and the discrepancy was discovered over the weekend. "It was a screw-up. It's not politics,'' Walsh said.
The proposed standards will now be the subject of public hearings across the state for the next two months. A final version will be submitted to the Legislature next year.
ONLINE
Read more about the science and social studies standards at the Department of Education's Web site: http://education.state.mn.us.
QUESTIONING EVOLUTION?
A draft of the Minnesota state science standards that cast doubt on the certainty of evolution was nearly published as the final document. Members of the citizens' panel that wrote the standards objected. State education officials say it was an honest error.
In the passages below, "rejected" shows the wording the department was preparing to publish. "Final" shows the version that had the panel's support and which the public ultimately saw Monday. The Pioneer Press put the changes in bold for emphasis.
Rejected: "Students will use evidence such as fossils, rock layers, ice caves, radiometric dating and globally gathered data, to explain how Earth may have changed or remained constant over short and long periods of time.''
Final: "Students will use evidence … to explain how Earth has changed or remained constant over short and long periods of time."
Rejected: "Students will be able to identify significant adaptations that might have allowed life to evolve from single-celled aquatic organisms to multicellular terrestrial organisms over a period of more than 3.5 billion years."
Final: "Students will be able to identify significant adaptations that have allowed life to evolve. …"
Rejected: "Students will be able to use scientific evidence, including the fossil record, homologous structures, embryological development, or biochemical similarities, to classify organisms showing possible evolutionary relationships and common ancestry."
Final: "Students will be able to use scientific evidence … to classify organisms showing probable evolutionary relationships and common ancestry."
Rejected: "The student will explain how evolution may provide a scientific explanation for the fossil record of ancient life forms, as well as for the striking molecular similarities observed among the diverse species of living organisms."
Final: "The student will explain how evolution provides a scientific explanation for the fossil record of ancient life forms. … "
Rejected: "Students will recognize that a great amount of time, approximately 3.5 billion years, may be necessary to explain the variation of species that has produced the great diversity of life currently present on earth and found in the fossil record."
Final: "Students will recognize that a great amount of time, approximately 3.5 billion years, is necessary to explain the variation of species. … "
How does lack of blind faith in evolution impair one's ablility to engage in genetic research?
Actually, this makes more since than saying:"how the earth changed or remained constant" It either changed or remained constant, not both. If evolution does not know which (since the scientific method cannot not be used to demonstrate evolution), it should not be imposed as a dogma.
How do you know they are teaching blind faith, and not "here's why evolution explains things better than x?"
In any case, what does it have to do with the ability to learn genetic science? Does one need to know how the laws of physics came into being in order to be able to make use of them?
Actually, at institutes of higher learning, yes! I spent a rather large amount of time in third and fourth year physics classes understanding why Mawell's equations et al are better than anything else, as well as how to apply them. Same goes in all of my other science courses. High school science courses tend to come off as "just-so-stories" because they have to be general to give students an overview of all of the field. Experimentation in labs serves to provide verification of what is taught in class, independent of the "whys" It's not until later when you begin to really find out why it is believe this is the way things are.
Science builds on what came before it. That's it's power. In astronomy, without the work of the stellar astrophysicists of the 1800's like Henry Draper and Henry Norris Russell, we still would be wondering what's up with those big fuzzy nebulae, and how far away they really were.
How does a Creationist's blind faith in the Bible qualify him to teach modern science to children?
If you turn it around the question becomes, how can you study DNA if you don't believe it does anything?
The theoretical derivations of Maxwell are necessary to understand the next steps in theoretical physics. Like I said, science builds on itself.
For a theoretical physicist, it is useful to know where things came from. For an engineer, each equation is just another tool in the toolbox, right? It depends on your field.
You're talking about something very different than I am. I wasn't asking you how the equations are derived. I was asking you how the laws of physics that they describe, came into being at all. Is it necessary to know the answer to that in order to make use of the equations?
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