Monthly Archives: July 2008

“Behold: the atheist’s nightmare” (a banana) [ video ]

Before I say anything about it, just watch this video first:

principal apologizes for school’s Excellent test results

from The [Cleveland] Plain Dealer:

Students pass state test, but at what cost to their education?
by Regina Brett

Tuesday July 22, 2008, 3:10 PM
The school report cards came out in June.
Rocky River Middle School passed the 2008 Ohio Achievement Tests, earned an Excellent rating from the state and met the requirements for Annual Yearly Progress.
For all of [...]

Momentous TX education hearing

A truly momentous and impressive public hearing by the Texas House Public Education Committee has just wrapped up in Austin (July 16, 2008).
I did not hear all of it. I heard State Board chairman McLeroy’s presentation and some of the questioning. Hours later I heard the witness before Steven Schafersman (Texas Citizens for Science) through [...]

TX House Committe testimony by Texas Citizens for Science

Testimony by Steven D. Schafersman, president of Texas Citizens for Science, is now posted at the TCS website. Here’s an overview of their recoomendations:
I urge you to take even more powers away from the SBOE. Specifically, I urge you to revise the law so that textbooks in Texas are adopted by each [...]

Wed 7/16 program in Austin on protecting science education

Here’s a press release for a public program on the UT campus in Austin, Texas this coming Wednesday titled ‘Science Education in Texas: Keeping It Religion-free’
From a curriculum standpoint, I think that’s a mistaken emphasis. The point should be to preserve the integrity and authenticity of science curriculum. The courts can act to stop unconstitutional [...]

teaching evolution controversy debate on CNN

Here’s a five-minute debate:

I don’t have time to comment now, so I’ll just post the clip for now.

Texas Supreme Court immunizes exorcism

I hesitated before posting this, since it’s almost off-topic for this blog on curriculum.
Regrettably, however, exorcism is not so irrelevant to public education as we might hope, given the signing of the anti-science education law by the Louisiana Governor Jindal who also, by the way, has written a published article retelling his participation in an [...]

teaching about science and religion in the public schools

Michael Dowd has left a comment on my previous post that I think deserves to be shared. The comment was appropriate there, but it raises a problem that’s a little different from the main focus of that post; so this new post can focus on Dowd’s own proposition.
The earlier post quoted John West of Discovery [...]

John West: U.S. evolution education is “dumbed down”

Here’s a video clip from CNN on the “Academic Freedom” bills being supported in states around the U.S. by the Discovery Institute (DI), the major proponents of Intelligent Design. The clip is seven minutes long, with a reasonable 3-minute overview followed by a 4-minute interview with Michael Dowd, author of Thank God for evolution: how [...]

The Pueblo, me, and Washington, DC

Last January was the 40th anniversary, capture of the U.S.S. Pueblo – as commemorated then on Ed Darrell’s blog.
More recently, Ed’s added a post on the continuing repercussions of that event, even reaching to last week’s negotiated agreement between North Korea and the Bush administration over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
This new post includes a [...]