Posted on 02/15/2006 12:53:18 AM PST by jennyp
COLUMBUS - The Ohio school board voted Tuesday to eliminate a passage in the state's science standards that critics said opened the door to the teaching of intelligent design.
The Ohio Board of Education decided 11-4 to delete material encouraging students to seek evidence for and against evolution.
The 2002 science standards say students should be able to ``describe how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory.'' It includes a disclaimer that the standards do not require the teaching of intelligent design.
The vote is the latest setback for the intelligent design movement, which holds that life is so complex, it must have been created by a higher authority.
In December, a federal judge barred the school system in Dover, Pa., from teaching intelligent design alongside evolution in high school biology classes. The judge said that intelligent design is religion masquerading as science and that teaching it alongside evolution violates the separation of church and state.
On Tuesday, the Ohio Board of Education directed a committee to study whether a replacement lesson is needed for the deleted material.
The vote was a reversal of a 9-8 decision a month ago to keep the lesson plan. But three board members who voted in January to keep the plan were absent Tuesday. Supporters of the plan pledged to force a new vote to return the material soon.
``We'll do this forever, I guess,'' said board member Michael Cochran, a Columbus lawyer and supporter of the lesson plan.
Board member Martha Wise, who pushed to eliminate the material, said the board took the correct action to avoid problems, including a possible lawsuit.
``It is deeply unfair to the children of this state to mislead them about science,'' said Wise, an elected board member representing northern Ohio.
In approving Wise's motion, the board rejected a competing plan to request a legal opinion from the attorney general on the constitutionality of the science standards.
The state's science lesson plan, approved in 2004, is optional for schools to use in teaching the state's science standards, which are the basis for Ohio's graduation test. Although schools are not required to teach the standards, districts that do not follow the standards put students at risk of not passing that part of the Ohio graduation test.
The Pennsylvania court decision against teaching intelligent design does not apply in Ohio, but critics of state standards say it invites a similar challenge.
Wise said other events since the ruling made removing the standards even more important. Earlier this month, for example, Gov. Bob Taft recommended a legal review of the standards.
In addition, members of a committee that advised state education officials on Ohio's science curriculum said the standards improperly single out the theory of evolution and could lead to the teaching of religion.
Board member Deborah Owens Fink, who voted against eliminating the lesson plan, said it is unfair to deny students the chance to use logic to question a scientific theory. She said scientists who oppose the material are worried that their views won't be supported.
``We respect diversity of opinion in every other arena,'' said Owens Fink, an elected board member from Akron.
Not in the post to which I replied. I read them in reverse order when I go to "My Comments." And, your "detailed information" did not encompass the goodly portion of Christiandom which accepted the flat Earth as Biblical, which the link I provided did.
Scholars and knowledgable have been aware coginizant of the spherical nature of the earth since pre-history.
I agree. While I totally support teaching science, not Bible stories in biology class, there is a lot wrong with public schools, and you shouldn't have had to support an education system that taught things inconsistent with your beliefs.
As far as vouchers for the poor...I'd rather see that provided by voluntary charity; that would keep the schools free from the government setting standards. An excellent resource is The Alliance for the Separation of School & State.
Probably after they notice the IDiots and creatards abuse the political system to get their religious bullshit taught in science class.
There are MOST LIKELY several hundred trillion bazillion universes out there and we just got lucky to be on the only one that would support life. Why of course!
Not since pre-history, but at least from classical times. I've come across comments the ancient Egyptians knew the shape of the Earth, but I have yet to find any substantiation for it. Pythagoras may have determined the shape of the Earth from the shadow it cast on the Moon during a lunar eclipse (which would put knowledge the Earth was a sphere as early as the fifth or sixth century B.C.).
LOL, it's funny that you seem to understand that that the "must have had some form of intelligence behind their creation/formation" part is a [baseless] conclusion, and, as such, cannot be "OBSERVE[D]". It just proves once again that ID makes sense, but only to dolts.
Personally, I prefer the church of Paul Bunyan above all the rest..
""A lumberjack of huge size and strength, Paul Bunyan has become a folkloric character in the American psyche. It is said that he and his blue ox, Babe, were so large their footsteps created Minnesota's ten thousand lakes. Babe measured 42 axe handles and a plug of chewing tobacco between his horns. He was found during the winter of the blue snow; his mate was Bessie, the Yaller Cow. Like many myths, this explains a physical phenomenon. Bunyan's birth was strange, as are the births of many mythic heroes, as it took seventeen storks to carry the infant (ordinarily, one stork could carry several babies and drop them off at their parents' home). Paul and Babe dug the Grand Canyon by dragging his axe behind him, and created Mount Hood by piling rocks on top of their campfire to put it out"".
True? Well, a book said so! Good enough for me! LOL!
Bullying is rampant in public schools because of the lack of basic social skills of the teachers and administrators. Combined with the "zero tolerance" bilge, I have to say that public schools need a lot of fixing.
Our kids are being taught to run away from bullys, rather than stand their ground and fight back, and that the symbol (say, a butterknife in the lunch) is as bad as the substance (a real knife brought for violent purposes).
I favor equal access to education and the concept of public schools, but I also blame a good deal of the dumber reactions to the terrorists directly on public school teachers.
IOW, someone has to win the lottery, and they usually do so without Divine Intervention.
I second that!!!
The second sentence of your post is incorrect.
There are precisely zero peer reviewed scientific papers demonstrating ID.
The Discovery Institute has never funded any research that would produce such a paper.
... and warp them with religious nonsense. This will, of course, cause great joy in both the Chinese and Indian scientific communities, as they gain the opportunities that are lost by Americans who believe in fairy tales.
The fact that the shape of the earth is evident by the shape of the shadow during a lunar eclipse, if not the shape of moon and sun themselves indicates to me that the spherical nature of the earth was known to prehistory. Another common observation that would suggest non-flatness is the disappearance of boats over the horizon -- since the water level is flat.
That's funny. I consider dolts and idiots those who can't come to the rational conclusion that a fine swiss watch, when compared to a random pile of rocks, must have been formed by some sort of intelligence.
Isaiah 40:22 "It is He who sits above the circle (sphere) of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in."
Those who read their Bibles carefully always knew that the earth was round. Until the printing press came along, the Bible was rarely translated into the language of the common man and few had access to the Scriptures. Once that happened, western civilization changed dramatically - in all realms, including science.
Unfortunately, in post Christian Europe and now America, the concept of life, liberty and property being inalienable rights endowed to mankind by a Creator is being eroded on a daily basis. We are trailing Europe by 50 years or so but we are definitely heading in that direction, thanks in no small part, to a cultural rejection of the God of the Bible as Creator of mankind.
Funny, I have 3 kids, all of whom have attended public schools. One has graduated from college and is doing quite well in the real world, a second who rec'd a full scholarship to college, she's now a junior, and the 3rd is to enter high school next year, and she is more aware of the world around her than a good portion of the adults I work with.
The quality of the school system often has much to do with the quality of the parental involvement in said school system.
Your one size fits all analysis is simply flawed and the result of obvious, and not well thought out, bias.
Cheers.
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