Florida mandates students must learn evolution.
I was going through my feed reader a few minutes ago, catching up with everyones lives as best I could, well the people who blogged anyway, and I saw some really neat promotional pens on someone's site, like really neat.
I kept clicking through my feeds and saw on someone else blog a link to this news article about how evolution is now going to be a mandatory part of science classes here in Florida.
How did I miss this story that came out on October 20th?
Ok, so it was only 2 days ago, but still, how did I miss this?
But this is totally great news!!
Ok, slow down Kat, not that easy, it's never that easy.
Florida has written new standards for teaching science that for the first time say public-school students need to learn about evolution. The proposed science standards, released Friday, call evolution one of the "big ideas" that must be taught as part of in-depth, hands-on learning. Florida's plan is part of a larger push to improve science education but could set off a battle over beliefs.Of course it's going to set off a battle over beliefs even though this is public education we're talking about, not a privately funded Christian school.
Current standards do not use the word evolution -- long a controversial word in education -- but do require teaching evolutionary concepts in public schools.Yes, schools here do teach the concept, but for all this time, not allowed to say the word. Isn't that the most ridiculous thing you have ever heard?
Several times the teacher had to ask him to stop saying evolution, and Sebastian couldn't figure out why.
Rather than explain why, the teacher just kept asking Sebastian to please not say it.
If he had explained why, Sebastian probably would have responded the same way I did when I learned that teachers can't say the word evolution in school, "What the hell is wrong with the word? Better yet, what the hell is wrong with the people in this state, that they would bar SCIENCE teachers from saying the word evolution when teaching evolutionary concepts?"
I swear, the majority of law makers and the people who write up the educational standards for this state, have been missing some really important cells from their brains for many years.
A group of teachers, professors and others started rewriting the science standards in May, aiming to beef up learning in a state where fewer than half of its students are proficient in the state's science tests. Florida students also lag behind on national tests, even as the United States lags behind other countries, particularly those in Asia.Part of the reason they can't pass the science test portion of the FCAT (don't even get me started on that one) is because they don't actually teach science.
They teach kids how to build little wooden cars that use nitrous cartridges, and then spend a whole day racing them on the schools track. Or they teach them about really generic science like photosynthesis, but not much else.
"If we want to be competitive in the world, we have to do this," said Susan Brennan, a Seminole High chemistry teacher in Sanford who helped write the new standards. The revisions aim to give more-concise directions to teachers and more-engaging information to students.It's about freaking time!
State officials say the draft is a step toward improving science instruction. They fear that without changes Florida students will be ill-prepared for college and for a technology-based workplace.Gee, ya think? How can our students be prepared for college science courses which discuss evolution, if our students don't even know what it is because teachers can't even say the word?
In recent years, some have pushed for teaching "intelligent design," which holds that aspects of living things are best explained by "an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection." Others have pushed for teaching that the theory of evolution does not fully explain the origins of life. Fred Cutting, a retired engineer in Clearwater who served on the standards committee, wanted the new document to reflect that latter view and to let students know that scientists do not yet have all the answers.Intelligent design.
Puh-lease.
If we use the intelligent design theory, and we have a creator, then explain who created the creator.
If something is needed to create something else, then something must have created the creator as well.
I agree with Mr. Cutting on wanting to stress the latter view that scientists do not yet have all the answers.
Because it's science and it tests and re-tests based on a constant stream of new information, of course it doesn't have all the answers yet.
Like I said in the series of discussions I am taking part in, science tests, it comes up with answers, and it is always testing and changing it's answers and theories based on new information that it (science) is always gathering.
Orange County-based TV evangelist John Butler Book took a harder line. "Evolution is an educated guess," Book said. ". . . That we came from an ape is absolutely ridiculous."But believing that we came from an invisible man in the sky, is a much more acceptable answer right?
That humans always looked exactly as we are now, in his image, even though we have fossilized skeletons to prove that cro-magnon man existed, and evolved to our current form of upright walking humans.
Seriously people, stop, my sides hurt.
The new standards are only a good first step, officials said, and must be accompanied by lots of teacher training and a push to encourage science majors to pursue teaching careers. The standards will not make much difference if teachers do not know what to do with them, said Cottle, the FSU professor. "The next generation of teachers," he said, "that's critical to all of us."Yes it is.
We need more teachers in our public schools who can actually teach our kids scientific theories, show them how to test them, and encourage a lifelong study and love of science, so that we as a people can find answers and find cures, and keep on improving ourselves and our quality of life.
Comments
Halleluyah!!
Posted by: Gizmo | October 22, 2007 10:40 PM