Texas Board Moves Closer to New Science Standards

[underpants]

Source: NY Times

Filed at 6:46 a.m. ET

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- The State Board of Education moved a step closer to dropping a 20-year-old science curriculum requirement that critics say is used to undermine the theory of evolution.

After two days of heated debate, the board made a key vote Friday in favor of dropping a mandate that teachers address both ''strengths and weaknesses'' of scientific theory.

A panel of science teachers had recommended that the language be dropped, suggesting instead that students be required to analyze and evaluate scientific explanations.

The new standards the board ultimately approves -- a final vote on the curriculum proposal is not expected until March -- will be in place for the next decade. They also will dictate how publishers handle the topic of evolution in textbooks.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/01/24/us/AP-Science-Curriculum-Evolution.html

[radfringe]

1. ;snicker; Ahhhh the standards are evolving.... n/t

[Towlie]

2. Texas is moving into the Twentieth Century! (Just one more century to go.)

[Towlie]

11. Oops! They just slipped back into the Nineteenth Century after only one day!

http://rackjite.com/archives/2724-Texas-Board-of-Education-Moving-Back-to-Creationism-One-Day-After-Vote.html

[byeya]

3. Why have the textbook publishers "colluded" with

the Texas fundys and watered down the biological science? The publishers should have been saying, "Here's the science, it's going to be in our texts, take it or leave it." But, the publishers have chosen to let Texas pretty much dictate the content of the text books and help dumb down the nation in the name of a few dollars.

[Realityhack]

4. Same reason they do it with history books.

(which wrecks everyone's history books). Texas approves books at the state level and buys a lot of books. You would have to get EVERY publisher to cooperate and the one closest to what Texas wanted would win big... so they all try to give the customer what they want while still making a product they can sell to other school boards with minimal or no changes.

[skepticscott]

6. Texas and California

basically drive the textbook industry, since they buy so many. Whatever they want, the rest of the states pretty much have to live with, and it is absolutely dumbed down. Not just because there are so many politicized topics, especially in science and history, but because a lot of the people evaluating the textbooks know little or nothing about the subject involved.

[MrsBrady]

5. in 1990 when I was a senior in high school in a Dallas suburb,

the Irving ISD issued new English books that year. They were very nice. Brand new books. Big, huge, almost took up my hole backpack.

The senior honors English class, which I was in, was focused on English lit from a historical perspective in the development of English as a language.

But did they start with Beowulf? No. It started with "stories" from the Old Testament from the bible, yes the bible. In an English class.
If they were going to use the Bible in reference to the development of English, you would have thought they would have put that in like the Renaisance period, when the King James version was written, but it was FIRST.
So, you can kind of see where the school board was going with that.

I have no idea what they are using in Irving today.

The teacher was working on her Doctorate in Humanities at the time. She was pretty cool. We read though them, but I think I remember she didn't really focused on that and went to Beowulf.
But she had us read through them, I think so she could at least "say" that she went over them.

[Acadia Blue]

7. Texas and the rest of the South is so backward and ignornant and

I am a native of the deep south, so I can be critical. Half of my idiot neighbors still think Saddam caused 9-11, and they all are devout Baptists who do not believe in evolution.

[WriteDown]

15. Yep...

I hate "ignornant" people. :eyes:

[Posteritatis]

20. Yep, they're down there with people who snark off based on typos (nt)

[kentauros]

16. So what about the other "half"?

Am I included in them? Or my family? Or all of the many intellectual friends I have known over the decades, here in "ignorant/ignoramus Texas"?

[Towlie]

9. "my hole backpack."

"The senior honors English class, which I was in..." :blush:

[snooper2]

14. you caught that too :)

nt

[Bake]

18. I assumed that was "just" a typo ...

But then you've got that "hole" thing of ending a sentence/clause with a preposition ...

Bake

[kentauros]

19. Then again, within the context of posting on a message board,

most people don't post in narrative as that would look (and read) really weird.

Instead, we are assumed to be "talking" and dialogue never has to obey the normal rules of grammar as people don't talk grammatically correct all the time ;)

[mrdmk]

8. The #1 problem is there are only 3 major text book publishers in the

country.

Twenty years ago, there were over 25.

[TrogL]

10. Canadians publish good textbooks

Granted, they're a bit weak on US history, but we could use the business.

[Acadia Blue]

12. dumb stuipid ignorant "Don't mess with Texas," macho crap heads.

[kentauros]

17. I know most people don't want to acknowledge it,

but the "Don't Mess with Texas" slogan that came out many years back was for our anti-littering campaign. I know y'all have heard of that being associated with that slogan, right?

We had another one, with freeway signs, too: "Littering is unlAWFUL"

Please, don't mess with the beauty Texas. We mean it ;)

[Lionel Mandrake]

13. God must have loved the stupid people,

for he made so many of them and encouraged them to fuck up the schools.

This proves that God exists.

If there were no God, evolution would have wiped out the stupid.

[marshall]

21. Understanding what a theory is should fall under language, not science

A plausible and accepted but ultimately unproven explanation for a phenomenon. As long as students understand the vocabulary that is used to teach them, what's the problem?