Slashdot Mirror
Limiting the Teaching of the Scientific Process In Ohio
frdmfghtr (603968) writes Over at Ars Technica, there's a story about a bill in the Ohio legislature that wants to downplay the teaching of the scientific process. From the article: "Specifically prohibiting a discussion of the scientific process is a recipe for educational chaos. To begin with, it leaves the knowledge the kids will still receive—the things we have learned through science—completely unmoored from any indication of how that knowledge was generated or whether it's likely to be reliable. The scientific process is also useful in that it can help people understand the world around them and the information they're bombarded with; it can also help people assess the reliability of various sources of information."
The science standards would have "...focus on academic and scientific knowledge rather than scientific processes; and prohibit political or religious interpretation of scientific facts in favor of another." Political interpretation of scientific facts include humans contributing to climate change according to the bill's sponsor, who also thinks intelligent design would be OK under the law.
I've argued many times before that the problem with "Intelligent Design" is not that whether it's "true" or not, but rather that it's not science because it ignores the Scientific Method and thus does not belong in a science class. I'm glad that this lawmaker, at least, is willing to address that argument directly instead of obfuscating.
He's still wrong, of course, but at least he's less intellectually dishonest than the average creationist. That's convenient, since it makes his position -- which is that Ohio should prohibit schools from teaching science entirely (since science is the Scientific Method) -- easier to both understand and oppose.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Do you have a source for that? The only things I can find in this area:
1) In 1995 they "re-centered" the test because scores were starting to slip.
2) In 2005 the Math section was made marginally harder to reduce the number of perfect scores. They also changed the verbal section to remove analogies.
3) In 2016 they will remove the more obscure vocabulary words to focus on more commonly used words.
4) MENSA will no longer take scores from the SAT after January of 1994 as criteria for admission.
None of this speaks to a steadily rising difficulty. And with one exception seems to indicate a little bit of the opposite.
You know what? You're right.
These sentences, found in an internet forum, have renewed my faith in humanity! Thank you!