Protecting Science Education for Michigan’s Children
MCFS co-founder and past president Robert T. Pennock published a guest op-ed about the new creationist-sponsored “academic freedom” bills and their connection to the deceptive ID creationist movie Expelled. The op-ed is titled Creationist Culture Wars, Hollywood Style and appeared on June 26 in the Michigan Messenger.
This is the text of a press release the MCFS advisory board just sent to our media contacts:
May 19, 2008, For Immediate Release
To: Michigan’s legislative leaders and the media
From: Michigan Citizens for Science, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting and improving science education in our public schools
HB 6027 is Trojan horse legislation that should be rejected Read the rest of this entry »
Rep. John Moolenaar has submitted a bill to the House Education Committee that represents the latest tactical phase of the anti-evolution movement. That tactic is to smuggle in all the anti-evolution arguments made by advocates of Intelligent Design Creationism (IDC) under the guise of supporting “academic freedom.” Similar bills have been submitted in several other states and are being fought over, including Florida and Louisiana. The writing and submission of these bills is being orchestrated by the Discovery Institute, the primary IDC advocacy organization in the nation; we know this because they had announced the content of this bill two days before it was submitted to the education committee and made available on the state website. The bill is HB 6027. Michigan Citizens for Science will, as always, work to protect science education against all attempts to water down or weaken the content, no matter how well-disguised those attempts might be.
MCFS advisory board member Ed Brayton will be speaking in Grand Rapids on Wednesday, March 26. He will be speaking to the Center for Inquiry-Michigan on the religious right’s demonization of the ACLU. The speech begins at 7 pm and admission is free. For more information, including directions, click here.
On Tuesday, November 13th at 8 pm, PBS stations will air a special 2-hour NOVA episode “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” about the Kitzmiller et al v. Dover Area School Board trial, which ruled that teaching Intelligent Design in public school violates the constitutional separation of church and state. MCFS President Robert T. Pennock was an expert witness in the trial and was interviewed for the NOVA documentary. Audio excerpts of his interview appear on the NOVA web site in the section on Defining Science.
Dr. Pennock was also interviewed for a show that will air locally on WKAR-TV following NOVA at 10 pm. “After the Trial: A Second Look” focuses on how the trial has affected creationism activism in Michigan. The show also features Rep. Brian Palmer (R-Romeo) who has sponsored several of the Intelligent Design bills in the state that MCFS has had to deal with.
Michigan Citizens for Science presented its 2006 Citizen for Science Award to Beverly Hundley, Director of Curriculum and Community Services at Gull Lake Community Schools, for outstanding service in defending the integrity of science and science education. MCFS gratefully recognizes her as an Enlightening Citizen for Science. MCFS Board member Greg Forbes presented a plaque to Hundley at the awards ceremony of the Michigan Science Teachers Association meeting on March 16, 2007.
MCFS President Robert Pennock has been named a recipient of a prestigious award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest scientific society. He has been named one of the 2007 AAAS Fellows for his tireless work explaining and defending the teaching of evolution in public schools in the United States.
Pennock is recognized for distinguished service in voicing the philosophical deficits in the pro-intelligent design argument and defending against its inclusion in science teaching.
“I feel very humbled to be honored for just doing what I love to do – studying philosophically and experimentally how science and evolution work, and helping teach about that process of discovery,” Pennock said. “Science is such an important way of understanding ourselves and our world; it deserves to be protected from those who would try to extinguish its light.”
Pennock has published two books and many articles that critique the intelligent design creationist movement. His 1999 book, Tower of Babel: the Evidence Against the New Creationism, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He was an expert witness in the historic Kitzmiller v. Dover case that ruled it unconstitutional to teach ID creationism in public schools. His work has been discussed in newspapers and magazines such as Harpers and Discover. Pennock earned his doctorate in history and philosophy of science from the University of Pittsburgh.
Congratulations, Rob, on a well deserved honor.
Michigan Citizens for Science (MCFS) is happy to announce that we won a major victory with the State Board of Education on Tuesday. Having failed to have pro-ID language included in a bill earlier this year to harmonize the educational standards for public and charter schools in the state, House Republicans turned their attention to the State Board of Education and attempted to influence that board to include anti-evolution language into the new science standards. The BOE rejected those attempts with a unanimous vote.
Unlike the earlier confrontations on the issue before the House Education Commmittee, the state BOE operates fairly and allows both sides to have the time they need to testify on the subject. MCFS President Robert Pennock and board member Greg Forbes both got to testify against the changes, and MCFS was involved in the weeks leading up to this vote in educating the board on the misleading nature of the proposed changes. Not only did they vote unanimously to reject those changes, they also voted down yet another attempt to delay the final vote (which had already been delayed by a month so they pressure the board for the changes). A major victory for science and yet another defeat for its opponents.
The Lansing State Journal editorial board had a very strong op-ed piece in today’s paper taking gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos to task for his support of teaching “intelligent design” in public school science classrooms. In addition to making the correct point that intelligent design is not really a scientific theory at all but rather a set of religious beliefs masquerading as science, they also make an important point about DeVos’ inconsistency with regard to educational standards:
Second, by associating a controversial issue such as intelligent design with the issue of local control, DeVos is speaking against his own position in improving state educational standards.
Earlier this year the legislature passed HB 5606, which attempted to standardize the curriculum requirements across the board for all of Michigan’s public schools and charter schools. Dick Devos was a staunch supporter of that bill. Yet on the issue of intelligent design, he suddenly changes positions and wants to have different things taught in different school districts without any consistency. Read the rest of this entry »
September 22,2006
Dr. Robert T. Pennock
President, Michigan Citizens for Science
http://www.michigancitizensforscience.org
president@michigancitizensforscience.org
As the views of gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos on teaching “intelligent design” in public schools have come to the public’s attention in the last few days, the DeVos campaign seems to be engaging in doubletalk on the issue. A Michigan Citizens for Science member wrote to the campaign inquiring about those views. Bizarrely, the DeVos camp is claiming he was misrepresented by the Detroit Free Press when in fact they quoted a statement the campaign put out almost verbatim. Here’s the full text of their email response. We’ve marked certain key phrases in different ways for comparison purposes: Read the rest of this entry »