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 »
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.
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 »
The Livingston Press and Argus newspaper has a report on gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos and his now-public position on teaching intelligent design along with evolution in public school science classrooms. Included in the article was a reaction from MCFS President Robert Pennock:
Robert T. Pennock, president of Michigan Citizens for Science, agreed.
“How could Michigan students compete in the life sciences, so important to our economy, if DeVos has them learn pseudoscience?” he asked. “A federal judge appointed by President Bush ruled just last year that intelligent design creationism is ’sectarian religion masquerading as science,’ so including it in the public schools is unconstitutional. DeVos is not only recommending that Michigan schools abandon real science, but that they break the law as well.”
This is a very important point that the public needs to understand. By encouraging local school districts to incorporate intelligent design into their science curriculum, DeVos is inviting them into a Dover Trap. In that Federal court case last year, the Dover Area School District ended up with a legal bill in excess of $1 million dollars after going ahead with an ID policy against the advice of their own attorney. Every relevant court precedent is strongly against DeVos’ position and it is irresponsible for the state government to encourage local school districts to do what the Federal courts have already declared unconstitutional and risk their financial well being in the process.
Dick DeVos, the Republican candidate for governor in Michigan, has confirmed what we already knew from the report of one of our MCFS members in a letter to the editor last week, that he advocates teaching ID in public school science classrooms. The Detroit Free Press reports:
“I would like to see the ideas of intelligent design that many scientists are now suggesting is a very viable alternative theory,” DeVos told the Associated Press this week during an interview on education. “That theory and others that would be considered credible would expose our students to more ideas, not less.”…
DeVos told the AP this week that allowing school districts to include intelligent design in science classes lets them to “expose students to a multitude of ideas, … to think through the challenges, to learn to discern between multiple theories.”
Up until now, of course, ID advocates have not developed an ID theory, their rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding, nor have they published any research supporting intelligent design. And as the Free Press notes, a Federal judge in Pennsylvania last year ruled that ID is merely a religious viewpoint wrapped in a thin veneer of scientific-sounding language and that it is therefore unconstitutional to teach it in public school science classes. DeVos’ policy, like the various legislative attempts to open the door to the teaching of ID in science classes, would lead local school districts into a Dover Trap, inviting them to violate the constitution and risk losing expensive lawsuits.
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.