Wesley R. Elsberry
Posts: 4966 Joined: May 2002
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State Department of Education will hold hearing here Sept. 30 (Princeton,MN)
Quote | In science, sixth-graders will learn how personal bias can affect the results of “scientific experiment.” Seventh-graders will learn about plate tectonics and evolution – how science explains the presence of fossils and similarities among living things.
The science standards include nothing about religious creationalism – that God, not random events, guided the path of development.
“You can’t teach creationalism in the classroom,” said Yecke, citing a 1987 Supreme Court decision.
Still, local school districts are free to teach the idea of intelligent design, she said.
Such a standard is not found in the proposed standards, she said. But that is not to say local school districts can’t include it in their curriculums, she said.
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The anti-science nature of the ID movement comes through even in this excerpt. Now it is part of the science standards that children be taught that science is untrustworthy. What children should be taught is that the personal bias of individual experimenters can lead to wrong conclusions, but that over time the scientific community finds -- and fixes -- such anomalies, and that science's track record on self-correction is unparalleled by any other "way of knowing" in human culture. It doesn't look like that's what they'll be getting in Minnesota, though.
Yecke's specific comments giving local school boards the OK to incorporate "intelligent design" into curricula are just irresponsible. ID doesn't meet any of the criteria for inclusion in a science curriculum, and simply opens up local groups for protracted and expensive legal action. If the Discovery Institute can't even think of what should be taught about "intelligent design", why is it even an issue for anybody else?
-------------- "You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker
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