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To: saganite
Here’s hoping Texas avoids the Kansas embarrasment.

This is a non-issue being drummed up by the liberals in Dallas. It even says so in their own article:

The [State Board of Education] must vote on any changes to the curriculum. Most board members, including the chairman, have said publicly they don't want to introduce intelligent design into the curriculum, and many of them also have said they want to keep the current language on evolution.

I've read a couple of interviews with the chairman of the State Board of Education (who believes in Creation) and he made it abundantly clear that the Board will not be introducing anything religion-based and that they will stick to what they currently have in the curriculum. Unfortunately the liberals in the state aren't happy with that and want everybody to believe that the big bad Christians are going to try and screw up the schools (regardless of the fact that Christians are on the State Board of Education and have no desire to introduce ID into the classrooms).
14 posted on 12/14/2007 10:31:19 AM PST by af_vet_rr
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To: af_vet_rr
To follow that up, in addition to the chairman, I read an interview with another board member, and they made it abundantly clear that while they were very religious, they felt that religious matters need to be taught in the church and at home by the parents and that the last entity they wanted teaching anything that was religion or faith-related was the state.

That pretty much falls in line with what most thinking Christians (and Jews) believe - that Children need to learn about religious issues through their parents and within the framework of their church or synagogue or whatever religious institution they are a part of.
16 posted on 12/14/2007 10:37:11 AM PST by af_vet_rr
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To: af_vet_rr
I've read a couple of interviews with the chairman of the State Board of Education (who believes in Creation) and he made it abundantly clear that the Board will not be introducing anything religion-based and that they will stick to what they currently have in the curriculum.

I haven't kept up with this particularly well in recent years, but I suspect the concern is about the textbook guidelines.

Years ago antievolutionists managed to get in language, I don't remember exactly, but something to effect of "testing theories" or presenting "alternative evidence" or something of the like. The language itself was not necessarily objectionable, except that it was applied ONLY to evolution and nothing else.

Later on the language was kept in but was universalized, or rather the cross references tying it ONLY to evolution were eliminated. Of course antievolutionists fought this. They'd never say so, of course, but from their actions it's obvious that antievolutionists actually want all theories other than evolution to be taught as dogmatically as possible -- essentially as facts -- so that evolution (which is often the only theory in biology textbooks that's actually called a "theory") can be made to seem questionable or invalid by contrast.

So I suspect the worry is that there will be an attempt to tie the anti-dogmatism language back to evolution (and evolution only). This could be done while still, however superficially, meeting the claim that nothing "religion-based" was being added.

18 posted on 12/14/2007 10:46:43 AM PST by Stultis (I don't worry about the war turning into "Vietnam" in Iraq; I worry about it doing so in Congress.)
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