There could be some new developments. They are reviewing the Intelligent Design creationism nonsense that was inoculated into their curricula a few years ago, and all signs indicate that they are planning to cut the infection out.
A majority of members on the Board of Education of Ohio, the first state to single out evolution for “critical analysis” in science classes more than three years ago, are expected on Tuesday to challenge a model biology lesson plan they consider an excuse to teach the tenets of the disputed theory of intelligent design.
A reversal in Ohio would be the most significant in a series of developments signaling a sea change across the country against intelligent design — which posits that life is too complex to be explained by evolution alone — since a federal judge’s ruling in December that teaching the theory in the public schools of Dover, Pa., was unconstitutional.
The article mentions the usual polls that say the uninformed public favor teaching creationism, but is also notable for including the scathing opinions of scientists and educators.
Besides the Dover decision, the disclosure in December of documents detailing internal discussions of the lesson plan helped revive debate here. Obtained by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, a group considering a suit on the plan, the documents show that department scientists and outside experts condemned the lesson as “a lie,” “crackpot,” “religious,” “creationism” and “an insult to science.”
Asked whether the lesson connects skills to the real world, an external reviewer wrote: “Not the real scientific world. The real religious world, yes, the real world based on faith, yes, the real world of fringe thinking, yes!”
Patricia Princehouse, an evolutionary biologist and historian of science who has led the charge against the lesson plan, said, “Basically critical analysis is intelligent design relabeled, just as intelligent design was creationism relabeled.”
Let’s look forward to seeing this new label tossed in the trash bin.
I’m not a legal expert, so I have to ask this: will every new renaming of creationism/ID/critical analysis have to go through a legal challenge before it is rejected from any sound scientific curriculum, or is there a way to cut off this unfortunate phenomenon at the knees once and for all in such a way as to discourage such thinly veiled attempts at introducing religion into the classroom?
I am assuming that each re-naming becomes easier and easier to challenge and refute. Dover is, in a sense, a “renaming precedent”.
I’m no legal expert either, but it seems to me that there is no way to finally discourage this. Those who wish to introduce religion will always try some new tactic, since the end justifies any means (even lying).
Here’s a good quote from that NY Times article you link:
But Deborah Owens Fink, the board member who originally supported the dual study of evolution and design and has been the leading defender of the standards, said, “The lesson has been in use for two years, and certainly a hole hasn’t been cut in the ozone or anything.”
What a lack of seriousness! The article also mentions the pro-ID group commissioning a Zogby poll of Ohio (I live here, btw) and found 76% of those polled support teaching a critical view of evolution. I wonder if that number is reasonably accurate. I would like to see the methodology of the poll.
Meanwhile in Kansas:
Science teachers pan new standards:
Hopefully, ID will be removed. I think people are finally starting to see why it isn’t science and shouldn’t be taught as such. All we can do now is wait for the outcome.
As the opinion Judge Jones wrote in Kitzmiller v. Dover already shot down the labeling of creationism as ID, relabeling that dog yet again by calling it “critical analysis” still won’t make it hunt.
This “critical analysis” gambit (and one can think of a large number of synonyms) is particularly sleazy. Critical analysis is what science is all about — except when, as in this case, it’s code for “bogus criticisms intended to manufacture a pseudo-controversy, and make our ideologically-motivated alternative look legitimate”. But that devil is in the details of the lesson plan.
Someone refresh my memory: did the Dover ruling only rebuke the positive claims of ID to be science, or did Hizzoner also address the alleged “critique” of evolution proffered by IDist and Creationists? If it did, then we may already have an applicable precedent.
cm said: The article also mentions the pro-ID group commissioning a Zogby poll of Ohio (I live here, btw) and found 76% of those polled support teaching a critical view of evolution.
I wrote about the poll that DI commissioned here.
By the way some of the questions were worded, I suspect this report was the result of deception. They kept throwing around “scientific evidence” of ID – as if they had some.
I’m in Ohio too, and I actually attempted to go to the meeting this morning but my 17 month old decided that he wanted to leave. Yup, I showed up in my jeans and t-shirt with my baby. LOL!! Oh well. Hopefully Virgil Brown is there today to tie up the vote (and hopefully they’ll just throw it out, if only to avoid a lawsuit).
Accepting for the sake of argument its proponents’, as well as Defendants’ argument that to introduce ID to students will encourage critical thinking, it still has utterly no place in a science curriculum. Moreover, ID’s backers have sought to a void the scientific scrutiny which we have now determined that it cannot withstand by advocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class. This tactic is at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard. The goal of the IDM is not to encourage critical thought, but to foment a revolution which would supplant evolutionary theory with ID.
Covered. Note that since the Ktizmiller decision didn’t work its way up the appeals ladder, it is s legal precedent, but not a binding precedent for other districts.
That was an excerpt from Judge Jones’ decision posted at Talk.Origins. I suppose I should have put it in a quote box.
WE have some state senators in South Carolina trying to add “critical thinking about evolution” to the science standards. I am so going to home school.
What Coturnix just said, Sergio.
The “Global Replace” Gambit won’t do it any more — the judge’s ruling in Dover has stomped that into the dirt so effectively that I rather hope the creationists will keep throwing legal fees down that black hole, rather than regroup to figure out a better strategy. I want them to waste money and time on this, rather than come up with a new gambit.
The “Global Replace” Gambit won’t do it any more — the judge’s ruling in Dover has stomped that into the dirt so effectively that I rather hope the creationists will keep throwing legal fees down that black hole, rather than regroup to figure out a better strategy. I want them to waste money and time on this, rather than come up with a new gambit.
Personally, I hope they decide to come up with a new strategy: Form a testable hypothesis and then try to falsify it. I doubt they’ll try it, and if they do, I suspect they’ll stumble on a falsificatiion rather quickly.
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