Thursday, September 01, 2005

Students Should Be Taught "a Lot of Science"


By Gregory J. Rummo
(Copyright Greg Rummo, All Rights Reserved)

This appeared in the Sunday New Jersey Herald on July 17, 2005. It also appears on the American Family Association Web site.
  • American Family Association


  • Earlier this year, the issue of teaching alternate theories for the origins of life in the public schools in the state of Kansas bobbed to the surface once again.

    The crux of the controversy was explained in the school board’s Recommendations for Further Revision to the Second Draft of Kansas Science Education Standards: “…[A] disagreement continues to exist within the Science Writing Committee with respect to very substantive issues relating to the inherently controversial issue of teaching students about the origin of life and its diversity. There is general agreement that standard biological evolutionary theory must be presented. However, Draft 2 continues to implicitly discourages (sic) any critical analysis of the theory that would ‘weaken’ it. This implication is reinforced by the absence of any learning objective that would inform students of important evidence inconsistent with evolution’s critical assumptions and historical narratives. This is in spite of agreed upon standards that explicitly state that students should critically analyze all scientific theories and consider competing alternatives.”

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  • 1 comment:

    Lisa Haddock said...

    Anonymous said...
    As a believer in God and as a scientist, I believe that Bacon spoke the truth in suggesting that "... A lot of science, leads one back to God. I believe he also asserted that God intended all nature for our use and instruction. I think as I have studied ecology, I have become more aware of how amazing and complex our natural systems are, and have come to see the hand of God in that complexity. I believe in God's hand in creation and also believe that the evidence that supports the theory of evolution was likewise made available to us by God. But I still come up short when it comes to teaching intelligent design or creationism as competing theories. These fall outside the realm of science, and in my opinion cannot be offered up on the same platform.