09.15.06
Free Press Editorial on BOE Decision
On Tuesday, the Michigan Board of Education decided to postpone its vote on new science standards at the request of two conservative members of the state legislature. The postponement was to allow more time for the legislature to have “input” into the new science standards, which in reality means more time to weaken them and water them down in regard to the teaching of evolution. The Detroit Free Press had a prescient editorial on the matter in Thursday’s paper. They wrote:
This is just another attempt to keep a door open to teaching creationism or intelligent design. The board should have closed it, as science teachers requested. Board members get elected to make decisions, not to defer to political pressure.
The delay was requested by the chairs of the House and Senate Education Committees to accommodate Republican state Reps. Jack Hoogendyk of Kalamazoo and John Moolenaar of Midland, who want a key wording change inserted into the policy. As it stands, the policy directs that teachers demonstrate how fossil records, comparative anatomy and other evidence “may” corroborate the theory of evolution. Hoogendyk and Moolenaar are pushing to have the words read “may or may not.”
Sounds innocuous, but this is really about injecting faith and beliefs into science.
Michigan’s new curriculum is supposed to set tough guidelines, not try to spoon-feed an ideology to students. Teachers who are allowed to, will, no doubt instruct students in the value of thinking about science broadly and asking critical questions.
By deferring even this much to the legislators, the state board has essentially given science teachers a vote of no confidence and deprived them of a chance to collaborate on classroom strategies. That’s because the board won’t vote until Oct. 10, and the science curriculum guidelines were supposed to be in place by an Oct. 3 statewide conference for teachers on Earth science, biology, chemistry and physics.
Quite so. The Free Press only mentions one small aspect of the changes they’re pushing for, all of which are designed solely to cast doubt on evolution. Anywhere in the standards where any certainty is expressed at all, even on the most mundane and obvious of concepts, they seek to insert weasel words to cast doubt where none really exists. For instance, one section requires students to “Describe how natural selection provides a mechanism for evolution.” This is a statement not doubted even by most advocates of intelligent design; even if one rejects common descent, there is no question that natural selection is a mechanism of evolutionary change within a population. Yet even that bit of certainty is too much for our intrepid legislators, who seek to replace “provides” with “may provide” in order to create doubt where none is warranted.
Another section requires students to “Explain how a new species or variety may originate through the evolutionary process of natural selection.” Hoogendyk and Moolenaar want to add “or may not” to a statement that, again, no serious person could doubt. We have observed speciation take place innumerable times and we can often measure the effects of natural selection on founder populations. This is an entirely uncontroversial fact of science, something even most ID advocates would not question. Clearly, their goal is simply to put so many weasel words into the science standards that students will doubt what is in actuality one of the most compelling and well supported theories in all of science.
And of course, none of this is new. This is the latest in a long line of efforts by anti-evolution advocates in the legislature to do anything they can to weaken and water down the teaching of evolution. They have sponsored bill after bill that would open the door for the teaching of intelligent design creationism in public school science classrooms, but they have all failed. Back in 2001, it was HB 4382, a bill that would have explicitly required that anytime evolution is taught they must also teach “the theory that life is the result of the purposeful, intelligent design of a creator.” That bill never made it out of committee, but in the 2003-2004 term they were back with HB 4946, which was virtually identical to the previous one.
In the current term, however, they’ve altered their strategy. Rather than explicitly calling for the teaching of intelligent design along with evolution in science classrooms, they’ve followed the Discovery Institute’s strategy of instead demanding that students “formulate arguments for or against” those theories that they oppose, namely evolution and global warming. HB 5251 was the legislation that called for such measures. But as Rep. Moolenaar told the Detroit Free Press, the bill would allow local school districts to introduce intelligent design into science classrooms.
None of those attempts were successful, but rather than giving up they’re now trying to influence the Board of Education to find a backdoor way into the curriculum. We encourage our members and all Michigan citizens who care about the quality of science education in our public schools to make their views known to the Michigan Board of Education via fax, phone and email. Here is the contact information:
Kathleen Straus, President
State Board of Education
P.O. Box 30008
Lasing, MI 48909
strausk@michigan.gov
(fax) 517-335-4575
John Austin
jcaustin@umich.edu
Elizabeth Bauer
ebauer7400@aol.com
Carolyn Curtain
jccurtin40@hotmail.com
Nancy Danhof
ndanhof@earthlink.net
Marianne Yared McGuire
mmcguire@wayne.edu
Reginald Turner
turnerrm@michigan.gov
Eileen Lappin Weiser
eileen_weiser@msn.com
Let them know that we expect them to stand up to this political pressure and protect science education for all of Michigan’s students.