Educators unveiled new guidelines on Tuesday that call for sweeping changes in the way science is taught in the United States — including, for the first time, a recommendation that climate change be taught as early as middle school.
The guidelines also take a firm stand that children must learn about evolution, the central organizing idea in the biological sciences for more than a century, but one that still provokes a backlash among some religious conservatives.
The guidelines, known as the Next Generation Science Standards, are the first broad national recommendations for science instruction since 1996. They were developed by a consortium of 26 state governments and several groups representing scientists and teachers.
States are not required to adopt them, but 26 states have committed to seriously considering the guidelines. They include Arizona, Arkansas, California, Iowa, Kansas and New York. Other states could also adopt the standards.
Educators involved in drawing them up said the guidelines were intended to combat widespread scientific ignorance, to standardize teaching among states, and to raise the number of high school graduates who choose scientific and technical majors in college, a critical issue for the country’s economic future.
These guidelines focus on teaching both Evolution AND Climate Change? Oh you just know this is going to run into serious opposition in the Bible Belt!
However I think that is a very positive step for education in this country and that it might help students in this country catch up a little to other industrialized countries that have been outpacing us when it comes to developing new scientists and new scientific development.
It is time to get superstitious charlatans and energy company propagandists out of way of our educators and give our children the chance to learn facts, testable, verifiable, facts.
As long as the money from religious zealots and energy companies flow to politicians, I don't have much hope. One only has to look to our GOP Representatives in Congress. Ignorance will continue to reign in the USA.
ReplyDeleteeat it domestic taliban tea_tards
ReplyDeleteComments I heard on it yesterday made me want to applaud. There is concern, not so much with the content, but with the critical thinking and learning the scientific process. No more memorization only, learn the principles and how scientists advance the study. This will endure while we have to unlearn the name of one of the planets.
ReplyDeleteNo. Seriously. He said it.
ReplyDeleteGOP Rep. Barton Cites Biblical ‘Great Flood’ As Evidence That Climate Change Isn’t Necessarily Man-Made
Barton asserted his support for the project before noting that he does not deny climate change, but rather, that he disputes whether the phenomenon is man-made.
“I would point out that people like me who support hydrocarbon development don’t deny that climate is changing,” the Texan congressman said. “I think you can have an honest difference of opinion of what’s causing that change without automatically being either all in that’s all because of mankind or it’s all just natural. I think there’s a divergence of evidence.”
He then cited Genesis 6:9′s “Great Flood” narrative, in which God flooded the earth as divine retribution with the intention of remaking it using the animals aboard Noah’s ark, as an example of climate change that was not caused my mankind.
“I would point out that if you’re a believer in the Bible,” he said, “one would have to say the Great Flood is an example of climate change and that certainly wasn’t because mankind had overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy.”
more...
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/gop-rep-barton-cites-biblical-great-flood-as-evidence-that-climate-change-isnt-necessarily-man-made/
Thank you for proving my point.
DeleteThere you have it. Smart as a whip, I tell ya,
DeleteOK, if we evolved from apes, then why are asshats like Barton still around?
DeleteO/T but HUGE! Let's hope we see the other professional sports leagues line up to do the same!
ReplyDeleteNHL Announces Support For Gay Rights, Pledges To Fight Homophobia With New Initiative
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/11/nhl-gay-rights_n_3062518.html
One of the reasons I decided to home-school my son was the lack of educational depth and breadth in nearby schools (private too) so, in general, I applaud such initiatives.
ReplyDeleteHowever, some concerns linger:
1) New Guidelines make for nice power point presentations, but without a well-educated, well-compensated group of teachers to implement them they will remain just that.
2) The focus on SCIENCE as distinct from the minds and times in which the theories arose strikes me as very flawed. The internet allows anyone with a wired device access to all the source material. In brief, if you're going to teach Newton's 3 Laws why not use the Principia?
3) Earth Science (climate being a topic therein) is a growing field, at least in part, because it's still relatively new and data collection is hobbled by the relative time problem (humans live 70-80 years give or take while the events one would hope to study and model can take 100s of human generations to unfold). Dogmatism in a field like this is not recommended.
Dave Lewis wrote in part: data collection is hobbled by the relative time problem
ReplyDeleteI suppose it could seem that way to someone who believes that historical research is inferior to experimental research. Past events do leave traces which can be examined in present time—why else would a police force have a forensics division? The equal status of historical science is addressed at greater length at: http://spot.colorado.edu/~cleland/articles/Cleland.Geology.pdf
"Hobbled" is not synonymous with "blocked."
DeleteThe philosophical problems associated with historical science compared with observational or experimental science were a hot topic when I was in college and they remain so today. David Lewis' (no relation, but humorous) asymmetry of over-determination thesis, upon which Ms. Cleland's arguments are based, has many detractors, myself included.
Hume's objections to many causal perspectives are, to me, still valid.
I'm not arguing one can't make inferences, but more subtly suggesting that such inferences need to come with warning labels- "based on this set of assumptions and evidence."
Such a warning label on Ptolemy's views of the solar system might have been helpful. Once such theories become dogmas people have a nasty habit of being burned at the stake. But such has been the history of science, or so argued Thomas Kuhn.
The Popper vs. Kuhn battle still seems to rage.
Genesis 6:4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. (GIANTS!)
ReplyDeleteExodus 7:11 Then Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers: now the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their enchantments. (SORCERERS and MAGICIANS)
Exodus 22:18 Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. (WITCH)
Leviticus 11:20 All fowls that reep, going upon all four, shall be an abomination unto you. (four-legged birds...)
Leviticus 11:22-23 Even these of them ye may eat; teh locust...the beetle...the grasshopper..but all other flying creeping things, which have four feet, shall be an abomination unto you. (four-legged insects ...don't eat 'em)
Leviticus 17:7 And they shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils, after whom they have gone a whoring. (devils)
Numbers 24:8 God brought forth out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn; he shall eat up the nations his enemies, and shall break their bones, and pierce them through with his arrows. (UNICORN)
Deuteronomy 3:11 For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of giants; behold his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man. (GIANT - his bed was 13.5 feet long x 6 feet wide. so... apparently NOT a metaphor - REAL giant)
Deuteronomy 32:33 their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps. (DRAGONS)
The Bible as a science book?
Psalm 44:19 Though Thou hast sore broken us in the place of dragons, and covered us with the shadow of death. (DRAGONS)
Psalm 22:21 Save me from the lion's mouth; and my lowness from the horns of the unicorns. (UNICORNS)
...I can do this all day long.
This could be the start of something big! We need more students in Math and the Sciences. These "creationists" are doing kids, and society as a whole, a huge disservice.
ReplyDelete