Democracy Has Prevailed.

February 14, 2007

Some Sanity in Kansas

From Reuters:

The Kansas Board of Education on Tuesday threw out science standards deemed hostile to evolution, undoing the work of Christian conservatives in the ongoing battle over what to teach U.S. public school students about the origins of life.

The board in the central U.S. state voted 6-4 to replace them with teaching standards that mirror the mainstream in science education and eliminate criticisms of evolutionary theory.

"I'm glad we've taken this step. If we are going to have a well-educated populace, this is important," said board member Sue Gamble.

Now I wonder if dubya still thinks that "both sides should be taught" (as if both sides were equally valid competing theories). From 2005:

President Bush invigorated proponents of teaching alternatives to evolution in public schools with remarks saying that schoolchildren should be taught about "intelligent design," a view of creation that challenges established scientific thinking and promotes the idea that an unseen force is behind the development of humanity.

Although he said that curriculum decisions should be made by school districts rather than the federal government, Bush told Texas newspaper reporters in a group interview at the White House on Monday that he believes that intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution as competing theories.

President Bush said students "ought to be exposed to different ideas."

"Both sides ought to be properly taught . . . so people can understand what the debate is about," he said, according to an official transcript of the session. Bush added: "Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. . . . You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."

For a theory as equally valid to Intelligent Design, please open your pseudoscience books to this.
I know, I know. It's an old joke. But so is Intelligent Design.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I wonder what our beloved President means by "both sides." Does he mean we should teach both the Egyptian creation myth and the Christian one? Maybe he means both the American Indian myth and the story as told by the Koran.