An earlier post here includes a video with this line from Ben Stein (whose movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which purports to “document” a truth-and-evidence-defying regime of “neo-Darwinist orthodoxy” dogmatically supressing an abundance of evidence against evolution, was cited to that end by creationist members of the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) in their [...]
Category Archives: Intellectual and Academic Freedom
fair, or “balanced”?
November 23, 2008 – 2:54 pm
Some observers have commented that nothing new or noteworthy emerged from the November 19, 2008 session of the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE).
Well, maybe this isn’t new, but I think it deserves notice:
Despite the overwhelming imbalance of testimony favoring standards that would support the teaching of real science in Texas, newspaper stories have managed [...]
“strengths & weaknesses” — harmless in Texas?
November 22, 2008 – 2:26 pm
On the website of the Texas Freedom Network, “africangenesis” comments:
Ed Darrell, I doubt you can trace the failure of Texas schools to the “strengths and weaknesses” language which has been around a couple of decades.
Jonathan Saenz (identified by TFN as “director of legislative affairs for Plano-based Free Market Foundation, the Texas affiliate of James Dobson’s [...]
Why should anybody care what Palin thinks about creationism?
August 30, 2008 – 3:48 pm
The trouble with Palin’s remarks on science teaching is NOT that she, as VP or even P, would somehow insert creationism into “science” curriculum: The problem is it shows a lack of understanding of science itself, which COULD be dangerous — even in a VP.
VP candidate Palin supports teaching “creation science”
August 29, 2008 – 10:05 pm
Click here for post on wired.com.
Here’s what she said, as reported by the Anchorage Daily News:
Teach both. You know, don’t be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important and it’s so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both. And you know, I say this too as the daughter [...]
DI’s legal eagles & the “Academic Freedom” legislation
August 18, 2008 – 1:37 pm
Commenting on an earlier post, Ed Darrell writes:
It seems quite clear that whoever drafted the law has very little experience in drafting laws, and less experience in trying to carry out such laws.
From a press release by the Louisiana Coalition for Science, we learn that
DI senior fellow and legal advisor, Gonzaga University law professor David [...]
Louisiana anti-science law: 3 questions, 1 suggestion
August 17, 2008 – 10:48 pm
The Sensuous Curmudgeon has been providing yoeman service keeping us all posted on developments in Louisiana with the immanent implementation of Louisiana’s new “science education” law. From him we learn, for example, about the scheduled meeting Tuesday, August 19, of the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE).
I have a suggestion (below) for [...]
teaching evolution controversy debate on CNN
July 8, 2008 – 12:59 pm
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
July 6, 2008 – 1:05 pm
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
July 4, 2008 – 8:15 pm
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”
July 4, 2008 – 11:50 am
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 [...]
Exorcist Governor defends anti-science law on TV (video)
June 30, 2008 – 4:42 pm
Here’s Louisiana’s exorcist Governor on CBS Face the Nation, defending the anti-science legislation that he has signed into law.
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Here’s the transcript:
Anti-science law signed by Louisiana’s exorcist Governor
June 29, 2008 – 1:21 pm
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As suggested in a previous post here, there was some speculation that Louisiana’s Governor Bobby Jindal might veto the new anti-science education law since, having studied Biology at Brown University, he could be expected to know the difference between what is, and what is not, the natural science that is practiced, taught, and studied as [...]
Louisiana Science Education Act - final text
June 28, 2008 – 2:18 pm
The LA site with the pdf file of the law wasn’t working when I created this post with the text pasted in below. Now it is working so now here’s a link to the official PDF version. See also the NCSE, and sources linked from my earlier post here.
Here’s the text, as posted by John [...]
La’s Bio-major Gov. signs anti-Biology law
June 27, 2008 – 5:08 pm
Louisiana’s Governor Bobby Jindal, who was himself a Biology student at Brown University, apparently doesn’t care if Louisiana students “don’t know much about Biology” when they graduate from high school.
As reported in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Jindal has signed into law the “Louisiana Science Education Act,” that “will allow local school boards to approve supplemental [...]
like teaching Klingon in French class
June 22, 2008 – 7:57 pm
It would be more like the situation where a teacher hired to teach French in French class decides instead to mix in grammar and vocabulary from Italian (or Klingon, maybe, to make the analogy more precise — since Italian is another real language, after all), without letting students know that what they’re learning is not really French, and with state law protecting the teacher against any kind of repercussions.
¿ against teaching the controversies (or “strengths and weaknesses”) ?
June 10, 2008 – 2:16 pm
While the ridicule is well deserved, I want to take exception to something possibly implied in Curmudgeon’s response, where he says that “High school students don’t know how to reach ‘their own conclusions’ about science. That’s why they’re in school! That’s why we call them students! “
