Science Education

Here is the e-mail I sent to New York Times reporter Laurie Goodstein after she interviewed me last Thursday for her predictable hatchet-job on intelligent design in Sunday’s Times. Decide for yourself whether her story accurately reflected all of the information she was given: Laurie, It was good to talk with you. In follow-up to our conversation, here is a link providing a list of the peer-reviewed and peer-edited scientific publications favoring intelligent design and/or fundamental critiques of the claims of neo-Darwinism: https://www.discovery.org/a/2640/. To reiterate: We think that the debate over intelligent design will eventually be decided among scientists and scholars, and that’s why we put most of our resources into supporting the work of scholars on intelligent design and Read More ›

While the newsmedia lavish praise on the new Darwin exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, no one seems to have noticed that the museum is presenting a thoroughly sanitized portrait of Charles Darwin, completely suppressing Darwin’s real views on such troubling issues as eugenics and race. According to the online version of the exhibit, far from being a “Social Darwinist,” Mr. Darwin is supposed to have been a passionate egalitarian who would have been horrified by any application of his theory to social and political issues. The exhibit proclaims: Darwin passionately opposed social injustice and oppression. He would have been dismayed to see the events of generations to come: his name attached to opposing ideologies from Marxism to Read More ›

The good people of South Africa have been grossly misinformed about Kansas. Below is a slightly edited (for grammatical purposes) version of a letter I submitted to Independent Online: Dear Editor, Maxim Kniazkov’s article, “Conservative US state pushes Darwinism aside” contains numerous factual errors. Firstly, the article implies that evolution will not be taught in Kansas under the new science standards. This is not true, as the standards themselves contain over 30 references to teaching evolution. The change is that evolution will not be taught DOGMATICALLY. Evolution is still taught in great detail, but now students can learn about the evidence which supports evolution, but also now they will learn about the scientific evidence which challenges evolution. (see https://scienceandculture.com/2005/11/oops_head_of_national_associat.html for Read More ›

Ignorance is apparently bliss for Wayne Carley, head of the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT). On Wednesday, he issued a statement to members of his group blasting the Kansas State Board of Education for “removing the mention of evolution from their state science education standards.” The most notable problem with Carley’s statement is that the Kansas Board of Education did not remove “the mention of evolution” from its state science standards. Indeed, the terms “evolution” or “evolutionary” appear more than thirty times in the new Kansas Science Standards, most importantly in the following benchmark:

Benchmark 3: The student will understand the major concepts of the theory of biological evolution.

Either Carley has a problem with reading comprehension, or he never bothered to read the Kansas Science Standards before condemning them. Yesterday I e-mailed Carley about whether he had actually read the Kansas standards before issuing his denunciation. I also sent him the text of the benchmark on evolution and asked whether he was going to issue a corrected statement. He responded that a corrected statement had been issued. But he didn’t answer my question about whether he had read the standards before issuing his initial statement.

Much of the reporting on the new science standards adopted by the Kansas Board of Education this week has been remarkably thin on substance. For one thing, the reports have all but ignored the Kansas Board’s own statement as to why its new science standards cover the scientific debate over evolution. As a public service, I thought I’d reprint here the excellent explanatory statement the Board included at beginning of the standards:

Critics have been loudly proclaiming that the sky is falling because Kansas is daring to teach lines of scientific evidence which challenge Neo-Darwinism (evidence which is based in mainstream peer-reviewed literature). These critics have provided a parade of horribles that these standards will lead to everything from “teaching creationism,” to “teaching religion,” to “teaching intelligent design,” to ridicule, and worst of all, God. Yet the latest draft posted on the Kansas State Board of Education website (from August 9, 2005) says the following about teaching intelligent design: We also emphasize that the Science Curriculum Standards do not include Intelligent Design, the scientific disagreement with the claim of many evolutionary biologists that the apparent design of living systems is an illusion. Read More ›

Geoff Brumfiel with Nature has a news article on the recent decision in Kansas to teach scientific criticisms of evolution. I like Mr. Brumfiel and I think he is a good reporter. His April 28, 2005 piece in Nature on students and ID was fair and consciously non-inflammatory, albeit at times emphasizing religion over science. In his most recent article, I am quoted saying the following: “This is a huge victory for students in Kansas,” says Casey Luskin, a programme officer in policy and legal affairs at the Discovery Institute, an intelligent-design think-tank in Seattle. Luskin says that the standards will help students to recognize legitimate scientific criticisms of evolution. He notes that they make no direct reference to intelligent Read More ›

On Tuesday the Kansas State Board of Education adopted new science standards. According to the Board, these new standards “call for students to learn about the best evidence for modern evolutionary theory, but also to learn about areas where scientists are raising scientific criticisms of the theory.” These standards do not require the teaching of intelligent design. That fact didn’t stop some major media outlets, including Bloomberg News and the Washington Post, from erroneously claiming otherwise. The Bloomberg story began: Kansas State Board Votes to Teach Intelligent Design in Schools Nov. 8 (Bloomberg) — The Kansas State Board of Education approved a proposal to teach intelligent design along with evolution as a scientific explanation of how life began. The Washington Read More ›