Beyond School

This is scary. Really really scary. Every 10 years, major textbook publishers update and republish their books. And they use Texas’ state standards as their benchmarks because demand for textbooks in that state is so high. Next year is revision time, and depending on the outcome of today’s State Board of Education vote, textbooks distributed across the nation (for the next 10 years!) might include evaluations of the legitimacy of certain scientific theories like the theory of evolution. Say what?!?

According to today’s NY Times, yesterday’s preliminary vote on whether to uphold teaching evolution as is, without the clause requiring teachers to address the theory’s “strengths and weaknesses” (what weaknesses?!), was split 7-7 with one board member missing. That missing board member is a moderate, so chances are the “strength and weaknesses” clause won’t be reinstated. But the board’s 7 social conservative members did succeed in making the following amendments to the state’s official curriculum:

In biology, teachers will be required to “analyze and evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency of natural selection to explain the complexity of the cell.” In earth-science, teachers will have to address “current theories of the evolution of the universe including estimates for the age of the universe.” I suddenly feel very nauseous. More