thurdl's take on...

...Pandas...AND People!

For those who haven't seen what's going on in Pennsylvania, I first present some pre-reading before I start to rant:
WaPost: Parents Seek to Block Teaching of 'Intelligent Design.'
CNN.com: 'Intelligent Design' debate back in court

This goes back a few months, but is back into the news now because the lawsuits are about to finally go before a judge, and the question is this: should Intelligent Design even be mentioned in public school classrooms. If you read the newsletter that Dover Area Schools released on the subject you will see that they are defensive about being labelled as teaching Intelligent Design. Which is, to be completely technical, true. What they are doing is having teachers read a statement to their students making it clear they are only being taught evolution because Pennsylvania education standards require it, continuing the old chessnut of calling evolution a "theory" while not explaining that the scientific and laymans use of the word are different, claiming gaps in the theory, offering Intelligent Deisgn as an alternative, and again stating that students are being taught evolution only because Pennsylvania requires it. If you follow the "newsletter" link, you can read the whole three paragraph statement for yourselves

It also presents a long statement of support from Sen Rick Santorum, but that's another matter.

What the school district is doing is making available a book called Of Pandas and People available to students in school libraries. For those curious, you can check the book out, as well as what people are saying about it, at Amazon (though following that link will probably make Amazon suggest all sorts of Creationist screeds to you for the next few days). I've read through some of the sample text that they make available and...it's amazing. It's amazing just how many logical fallacies can be packed into a book, and still have it considered a textbook. Just from the portion available, it's quite clear that this is not meant to be an Intelligent Design textbook, it's meant to be an anti-evolution textbook, which is succumbing to the classic gem that disproving evolution is a proof of Creationsim. Oops, I mean Intelligent Design. Which is NOT Creationism in any way, even though an early draft of this book used the word Creationism instead of ID. Plus, the publicity material for the book includes quote mining, the process of taking quotes from noted scientists out of context to make it sound like they question evolution. Specifically, this time they choose to take a popular Gould quote out of context trying to imply that he feels Darwinian evolution is dead, even though he was talking about something entirely different than evolution.

And this is what they want children reading. This is what they would be using as a classroom textbook if those pesky Pennsylvania school requirements didn't require evolution. Faulty thinking, quote mining, strawman presentations of evolution, it's all present. This book would serve as a great textbook...in a Philosophy of Science classroom discussing logical fallacies.

So. I did some research with a source I have available to me: a relative who works in a library in my old school district. She did a search, and discovered the book is not available in any school in Fairfax County, thank goodness. I'm somewhat hoping that it stays that way.

It's important for people to know what is going on out there, what people are trying to teach students. Outrage is the first step.

The odd irony of all of this is that, on the same day all of this is happening, the Washington Post also revealed research that backs one of the mathematical predictions of evolution. That on the same day people are going to court in PA to keep Intelligent Design the hell out of schools, we have even more proof of evolution. Not that proof is likely to sway many people, but it's nice to know it's there. Of course, yesterday, they had an article about the opening of the Creation Museum, the Creationist organization who acquired a T-Rex skeleton, which they are using as the center of a display about how teh T-Rex was a vegitarian living in the Garden of Eden.

Just a news filled week in the battle to keep science in science classrooms.

posted by thurdl @ 5:37:00 PM