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Texas Board of Education Supports Evolution
somanyrobots writes with this excerpt from the Dallas News:
"In a major defeat for social conservatives, a sharply divided State Board of Education voted Thursday to abandon a longtime state requirement that high school science teachers cover what some critics consider to be 'weaknesses' in the theory of evolution. Under the science curriculum standards recommended by a panel of science educators and tentatively adopted by the board, biology teachers and biology textbooks would no longer have to cover the 'strengths and weaknesses' of Charles Darwin's theory that man evolved from lower forms of life. Texas is particularly influential to textbook publishers because of the size of its market, so this could have a ripple effect on textbooks used in other states as well."
a victory for common sense.
Things are turning around for the better :)
Finally Intelligent Design is getting the boot it deserves.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
I'm all for teaching evolution but would someone please explain to me what the issue was with teaching the strengths and weaknesses? If science teaches us anything it is that we should always continue to question and refine our studies, not idly stand by and accept them as fact. No one is saying we have to introduce creationism or try to make evolution appear only as a theory (which some might argue it still is), but there is no reason we need to teach our students to blindly accept it as fact, without doubt or admission of weakness. This is not the spirit of science and frankly not in the best interest for those who probably already don't care that much about it. Whats gives?
When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up... reading.-Henny Youngman
profound misunderstandings of evolution, then how do you expect the broad public to deal with it. (I am of course referring to the "Charles Darwin's theory that man evolved from lower forms of life" bit)
Evolution is not the only theory taught in school. Gravity is another theory. I suppose that Texas schools should teach the "strengths and weaknesses" of the Theory of Gravity, too.
Judging from TFA balanced coverage and inculcating the ability to think critically still take a back seat to ideological conviction - it's just that the conviction in question is one secularists are more comfortable with.
While it's right and proper that creationism won't get a hearing in the Texas science curriculum I don't see why weaknesses in evolutionary theory shouldn't be discussed - of course as long as creationism isn't perceived to be the solution to said weaknesses.
An opportunity missed.
Seriously, think of the children. The teenagers, rather. Whenever I hear this debate roar its head, that seems like the first place to go. It's not like a high school freshman is going to be scarred for life by hearing two sides of an argument. "These people believe this for this reason. These other people believe this for this other reason."
Their heads don't explode. It's okay. It may even *gasp* make them think about opposing ideas. They've done it before, since when they wanted a cookie and their parents didn't want them to have the cookie.
If we spent the time we spend on the evolution debate on education instead, we'd be a lot better off.
--- Thousands are enslaved every day.
I entirely appreciate that this is a debate about I.D. and about religion in the classroom.
But that aside it is a great shame that we teach all science as hard "fact" with little experimentation or room for asking "Why?"
If you've gone though a Science education you know that you learn from the textbook and everything you read is gospel.
God forbid we'd ever want kids actually thinking for themselves or questioning anything, if that happened they might, you know... Push the field forward...
But in the academic world the "geniuses" are those students that can memorise the most trivia (see TV game shows for example). While truly intelligent lateral thinkers get put in the bottom classes and made to feel dumb.
I hope we like the world we made for ourselves...
Official policy really has very little to do with what gets taught in the classroom. Even in Biology, which is the only place that evolution gets mentioned, the textbooks have been very evolution-friendly for years. Of course in that, they have been focused on lots of aspects of evolution that have been disproven, like human fetuses having gills and other similar things. And of course, the real control over this content lies with the teachers, who for the most part teach science and the scientific method, which really doesn't support most of the conclusions that evolution-science come to since they aren't based on observation. Whether or not intelligent design is discussed officially in the textbooks makes no difference in the end, but science does get taught properly in most classrooms.
Welcome to the civilized world.
Yet for some reason Darwin's theory of evolution gets picked out so that teachers must highlight its weaknesses. Why might this be?
The TFA said the scientific community widely accepts Darwin's theory, while biblical proponents reject the theory. Thus, the state board forced teachers to teach pros and cons in the 1980s.
I guess the debate was so serious that the state board had to compromise to satisfy the creationism parties (who can be rich and powerful).
I guess evolution is a really thorny part of religion (specifically, blind belief). If students understand that humans are developed from fish and apes, then creationists have a harder time pushing their own agenda to these students.
Any idea whether churches in Texas in the 1980s actually had to report their income, pay taxes, and donate the proceedings to poor people and worthy causes?
.... Since a monkey can hack a Diebold voting machine.... And Bush has been determined to be the worst US president... There has to be a connection.
I think it would be valuable if schools taught methods and logic. Not just knowledge, but also the way of how knowledge can be arrived at. Teach people what is and what isn't a conclusive argument, point out the factors that complicate deriving valid conclusions from one's observations, and show that how experiments can be set up to minimize those factors. Preferably also teach statistics, so that people can calculate the probability of two things being corerlated vs. the probability that an observation is due to other factors.
All these are valuable skills, not specifically in the evolution debate, but in every aspect of life.
As for my stance on religious issues...I am convinced that we have no conclusive evidence one way or the other on most of them, and I would say that, until we do (which I think will never happen) everyone should be free to believe as they do. Nothing gives me the right to force my beliefs on you, and the same applies in the other direction.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
If proponents of the many Superstring theories have to face this notion, surely religious nutcakes must also fall under the same strictures of Science. And if that was taught in the classrooms, the students would learn far more about Science than what the normal litany of crap usually rammed down their throats from K onwards confers.
But, gasp -- that would be teaching our little young ones how to THINK, and the government could not possibly want a nation of young, inquisitive, aspiring CRITICAL THINKERS on their hands!!! Tough to pull the wool over the eyes of those who actually ASK QUESTIONS and will simply refuse to "just believe". Which would require far more out of our politicans and bureaucrats. Nope, can't have that...
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
Of the impending apocalypse!
Everybody hide!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Testing gravity on small distances is extremely hard because gravity is so weak. See http://www.stanford.edu/group/kgb/Research/gravity2.html for example. Cosmology is ongoing research, as you can see from the discussion around dark energy. In particular, measuring cosmological distances is a difficult problem. So one cannot say that gravitation were fully understood on cosmological scales.
What exactly makes an organism a higher form of life than another? We had this discussion just yesterday at the university... :p
There is no such thing as a "higher" or a "lower" organism. It all depends on the context of the discussion:
Humans for example, have the most complex nervous system than all other organism. This makes them the "highest" life form when discussing nervous systems. On the contrary, a species of archaea can for example live in underwater volcanic environments. This makes it a "higher" organism when discussing extreme environments.
And no, the size of the genome or the number of genes, are not a criterion for this either. The human genome has 3 billion base pairs, and there's a species of amoeba that has a genome of 100 billion bp.
And I don't want to hear any jokes about amoebas and overlords
I don't mind dating a girl that has been with everybody, as long as she had a good shower afterwards.
Has anybody thought about the fact that this is an intrinsically (north)american problem? I mean, the rest of civilized world seems not to have the same density of fanatic christians among the population so as to need changing official science at school. This, I think, is something to ponder upon (specially when your country thinks that it is the culmination of human civilization).
I think they are headed the wrong direction with this.
Evolutionary theory is vastly unimportant compared to a lack of Scientific Method. I see the requirement of showing weaknesses in Darwinian Evolution as forcing the employment of Scientific Method on difficult, emotion laden, and controversial issues. Beating the method into young impressionable skulls is far more important than whether they believe in creation by amoeba or creation by God. Teach them to think, don't tell them what to believe.
Just IMO.
-D
In the context of this hot-button topic, this is an important and necessary decision, but it's probably in general a good idea to impress upon students that scientific theories are never perfect, they all have strengths and weaknesses and even the most successful (e.g., evolution, Newtonian mechanics) leave plenty of room for refinement. Scientific theories have their own kind of Darwinian evolution, and while I don't necessarily want introductory classes to undermine everything they're teaching, it might be helpful if a part of science education were to provide better insight into the nature of the scientific enterprise than they do currently.
Lol!
ID is a hypothesis that states that an unknown alien race that left no evidence of their visit to this planet created all life. Exactly how they did this is completely ignored. It provides no possible reason for the dozens of different eye designs, or different means of locomotion, or the fact that similar species seem to be located in regions that are geographically close to each other.
It also logically suggests that life is designed not to adapt to changes in the environment, and thus will, by design, result in a gradually decreasing number of species, eventually resulting in just one.
I just wish they'd stop asking "Do you believe in evolution?" when some stupid journalist questions a politician. It's just makes people think evolution is a belief. Really, valid ways to put in effect get the same info would be questions like "Do you think evolution is valid?" or "Do you accept that evolution is a valid scientific theory?" I mean when you ask the first question my impression is that you don't really get science. (Not a surprise since I think alot of journalists are basically scientifically illiterate.) What it actually makes me think is that the person asking it isn't so much pro evolution because they're really for science but because conservatives hate it. (Which is a stupid reason to be for a scientific theory.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
that the most fit science education survives in the long run :-) at the moment that is the one taught everywhere else on the globe than in the south states of US.
If they were willing to speak truthfully with an honest heart about where the facts lead, a requirement to point out the weaknesses of evolution wouldn't be a bad thing. I read a fascinating article at New Scientist yesterday, Why Darwin was wrong about the tree of life, on how hibridization is rampant in life. It would be a fantastic thing to discuss in class.
But here's what would happen. Jim Bob would use that article as his talk on the weaknesses of evolution. No later than about two days he would be called to the principal's office and the discussion would go something like this: "Jim Bob, there have been some concerns about your commitment as a teacher. Do you feel you have the sort of character and motivation for teaching our youth?" And next round of contracts Jim Bob is asking whether you'd like fries with that. _That_ is how our honorable principal would handle the problem of Jim Bob bringing up actual science in discussion of Darwin.
Which comes to the second problem America has in this area: local control. Unfortunately, local control is a sacred cow in our society but as long as a couple crazy parents can sit outside a principal's door every day driving him crazy with their demands for this or that curriculum addition, we will have problems with American education. If we had a national curriculum like so many other countries at least much of the discussion would be above-board.
While the so-called weakness requirements was defeated, the school board passed another ridiculous law.
From TFA: "Evolution critics did score a minor victory, as the board agreed to an amendment that calls for students to discuss the "sufficiency or insufficiency" of Darwin's tenet that living things have a common ancestry."
This is still not over.
What is science when it's objectivity is discarded? It becomes the very thing you disdain; religion. No theory should be taught as fact. It should be taught for what it is. A theory until proven a fact. What's wrong with the truth? True science and true religion will support each other.
Students, now that we have covered the neo-Darwinian synthesis of natural selection and modern genetics, we should give some time to a competing explanation put forward by many prominent opponents to science.
In this alternative theory, the earth and all its life forms were created at 9:00 am on October 23rd, exactly 6,012 years ago, just shortly before a talking snake tricked a mud-man's rib-wife with a magic fruit. This crime required the Creator to impregnate a teenager several thousand years later, and now if you don't ritually cannibalize his zombie son, you'll roast in a giant lava pit forever after you die. All of the fossils you may see were caused by a giant flood or were deliberately planted by an evil spirit to deceive you.
You will understand America much better when you accept the fact that many more of your fellow citizens prefer this second explanation to the first one.
"Skill shows through where genius wears thin." -Wittgenstein || Religion: uniting aviation and architecture.
Texas as far as I can see takes no position on what specifically currently is accepted by scientific community as science, leaving that once again as it had always been before, up to publishers of science books. That seems a wise choice.
And Texas likewise makes no limitations on what may be presented in courses on history, literature, comparative religion, anthropology, and so on. That also seems wise. The only problem was teaching religion in a science course. That problem is now solved.
You may believe you created people.
But in objectivist America, people created YOU!!
It's this sort of thinking which doesn't help.
Understood with thanks. I get your point: People don't like being associated with the "lowly" gorillas and the "stupid" fishes.
Maybe our Science Depts should also team up with the Marketing Depts. It's easier for people to identify with the strengths of gorillas (uprooting trees), the grace of fishes (gliding through water), and so on.
Indeed, NASA has strong Marketing-like Depts that do a lot of multimedia work and press conferences. They have the ability to make people feel excited about space exploration, altering people's perceptions, making them feel that the money is well-spent.
Holy shit i must have been drunk, i don't remember doing that!
FRA: STFU GTFO
Which is a stupid reason to be for a scientific theory
But an excellent reason to be against a candidate. As a scientific question it's deeply flawed, but it does zero in on candidates who have an insufficient understanding of science and cannot be trusted (in my opinion) with an office where science is supposed to inform their actions.
Nearly all complex theories are poorly understood by non-scientists (and even scientists in a different field). Which is OK; I don't have to be an automotive engineer to drive a car, either. We accept the work of the experts and get on with our lives, knowing that we could go back and verify their work if the impulse moved us. So a person who believes that they know better than the experts (in any field) is either wildly brilliant or seriously deluded, and it's vastly more likely to be the latter.
Suddenoutbreakofsense ?
Ever notice that some Christian bands still get upset at copyright infrigement? It's like they want you to buy the message.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
404: Prayer Not Found
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I'm a solid supporter of the theory of evolution, but in a way this is too bad.
Too many people are taught evolution as if it were incontrovertible fact, but the reality is that it really is only a theory. The core ideas of the theory are pretty much indisputable, but many of the details are open to debate, yet we go around teaching our students whatever details are currently most popular as if nothing else were possible.
For example, the standard theory taught in schools is that genes are the only mechanism for inheritance, yet this isn't necessarily true. I'm not proposing that we teach creationism in school, but it seems to me that focusing on the weaknesses of a theory can help students develop critical thinking skills, and can only be good for the theory in the long run.
I think if you consider the belief in a higher power as a theory, as we do with evolution, we can come to an agreement that both can be taught side by side. Since neither science nor religion can actually tell us how it all began they are both equally wrong. Ask a preacher where God came from and he tells you He has always been here. Ask a scientist where all the particulates and atoms came from and he tells you they have always been here. Sounds like both need to rethink their positions.
I went to school in Texas and I can't recall strengths or weaknesses of evolution ever having been taught. This would have been about 2000 when I was in biology. Maybe it was dependent on which school district you were in. Mine was kind of a wealthy feeder district into UT.
ID is a hypothesis that states that an unknown alien race that left no evidence of their visit to this planet created all life.
Ur, no. Intelligent Design purposely skirts around the issue of who the designer is. Why? Because it's really more of a political movement, a trojan horse designed to slip creationism into the classroom through the back door. If they admit that the designer is the Christian God, that can be used against them.
That isn't to say that its defenders won't admit that the designer is God. They do, believe me. However, the people that are working "seriously" in the field (e.g.,, David Behe, William Dembski, and the other folks at the Discovery Institute) generally maintain the pretense that the designer is not God for plausible deniability.
Nor is this to say that there aren't some folks who say that the designers were aliens. Those folks (and I can't think of any examples) are definitely at the fringes of the ID movement.
This is so sad, all ID says is we don't know how the universe was created, but it didn't evolve on it's on on this planet.
Really, is that the hypothesis of ID? Okay, what experiments have been performed? What predictions about new data has it made that have then been found to be true and did not falsify it?
Everyone should watch Expelled. It's sad how uneducated most of the people that read are, they just take what the media says and believe it.
I watched Expelled. I noted that for being a documentary about the supposed persecution of ID proponents in the scientific community it somehow failed to ever state the falsifiable, hypothesis of ID or mention any experiments. Those are requirements for ID to be science. I'm not taking what the media says and believing it. I'm looking at what appears to me to be a media propaganda campaign promoting ID, and seeing nothing behind it. There is a reason ID is not taken seriously in scientific journals. It has the same scientific backing as the Flying Spaghetti Monster. That is to say, there is no formal, agreed upon hypothesis and have been no useful predictions made by it. It isn't science, just speculation that tries to disguise itself as science in an attempt to discredit what science has determined to be the most likely truth, because many people find the most likely truth to be inconvenient to their religious beliefs.
I actually support Evolution and Thunderbird. Each has its virtues and downfalls. Evolution's integration with Exchange systems saves me from the horrors of OWA, while Thunderbird's extensibility makes it extremely flexible.
So, what does the Texas Board of Education use as a back-end for their mail system?
Wait, what was the summary again??? And why is Evolution capitalized in the article's title???
:%s:work:/.:g
"biology teachers and biology textbooks would no longer have to cover the 'strengths and weaknesses' of Charles Darwin's theory that man evolved from lower forms of life" That is just not right. The theory certainly has its weaknesses and so those should be taught. They are throwing the baby out with the bath water. I do not support teaching a creationist viewpoint either in public schools.
Even the Texas board of education can evolve!
Texas has schools? And textbooks?
On a more serious note, someone I know went to primary school in Texas. They learned that the USA are the _only_ country with courts and democracy. Said person is under 50 and trustworthy.
> Still wondering about why you don't prevent bad things from happening if you are in fact the loving god you claim to be.
Read up on divine hiddenness. We answered this stuff thousands of years ago, but I guess no one was paying attention.
Evolution is about the origin of species, not the origin of life.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
I recall the day evolution was covered in my Texas public school, years ago. The regular science teacher left and a substitute came in to give a 30-45 minute lecture on Lamarck. His conclusion was that scientists were often wrong and that eventually the idea that "we are descended from monkeys" would also be rejected. I had wanted to laugh, but after looking around at my classmates I decided it was just too sad.
I don't see that this decision would help that sort of thing in the small, rural districts in Texas where this (along with bible study as "literature" these days) is much too common. I'd figured at the very least that discussing strengths and weakness would have more value.
As a biologist, I'm not aware of any "weaknesses," in terms of inconsistency with the evidence. I've read those promoted by ID/creationists, and all are false or downright fraudulent.
But there are certainly areas of evolutionary theory where unresolved questions remain. These are appropriate for discussion in classes at the appropriate educational level--graduate courses, or high-level undergraduate college courses--where students have the educational background to understand the issues.
Any scientist will tell you that evolution is a theory, just like gravitational theory, or atomic theory. ALL scientific explanations and generalizations are theories. The only facts are observations: "I dropped a pencil and it fell to the floor" may be a fact. "Dropped objects fall toward the ground" is a theory.
As a result, it is never acceptable to single out some area of scientific knowledge as "only a theory," because this conveys the false impression that it is less well established than all of the other theories that make up the rest of the body of scientific knowledge.
No, the equations of Newtonian physics are always wrong. Sometimes they are wrong by such a small amount that the error is not practically important, but being only a little bit wrong is not the same as being right.
Except that the theory isn't about man being the ultimate goal of evolution, or simpler life forms being "lower". Each life form is suited to its environment.
Texas is particularly influential to textbook publishers because of the size of its market.
What do they use them all for? I was fairly sure hardly anybody in the state could read.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
It is most disappointing that it was ever possible for religious prejudice to limit or control what is taught in any school. Strictly speaking, any attempt by any religious minority (yes all people of any religious leaning are a minority of the over all population of any nation and the world) is an abuse of the freedom of the majority. In a democracy the law and government is supposed to be representative of the people. Since no 2 people are likely to share the same religious beliefs, even if they both call themselves christian, religion cannot be allowed a place in any laws. By the same measure religion is personal, some people go to church and chose to join their religious belief to that of others, that is their choice. But doesn't mean they have any right to attempt to influence the teachings, thoughts or minds of others, not to mention attempting to âoeattack the more vulnerableâ. Targeting younger individuals is a common and well known tactic for those intent on indoctrination, they probably find it easier to manipulate the minds of those who are yet to forge their own views / ideas / philosophy fully.
Sorry, Folks, but evolution is just plain wrong. It wasn't Darwin, but Mark Twain who had it right. Man did not *evolve* from *lower* life forms. Rather, man *descended* from *higher* life forms such as the chimpanzee, etc.
"In a major defeat for social conservatives"
Excuse me?
Most creationists/ID folk may be "social conservatives", but that does NOT mean that most social conservatives are creationists/ID proponents!
Please stop giving these idiots more credit than they deserve and more power/influence than they really have. There are plenty of social conservatives who cannot stand these creatards and do not like their influence one bit.
Well thought, clean clear delivery, and there are many Christians that agree with you. The same ones are often ashamed to be associated with ID proponents. That is why you rarely hear from them.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Evolution supports the Texas Board of Education!
I think failure to separate the concepts of "fact" and "theory" are step one in allowing anti-science to sow confusion.
Evolution is a FACT. Then there is THEORY about how it comes about. Details of the theory are what scientists still discuss, not the fact (and not the core of the theory). Weaknesses in the details of the theory *should* be up for discussion, or you're not teaching science.
That things fall is a fact. The theory of gravitation is still an active area. That the earth is a ball, rather than flat, is a fact. Theory about how planets form is still an active area. Etc...