Monday's newspaper had interesting editorials on changes Texas school boards want to make in public school health textbooks. Most notable is pressure to change wording from "in adolescence, you begin to feel sexual desires" to "in adolescece, you begin to feel sexual desires for members of the opposite sex", and changing "people can raise children in loving parterships" to "families are a married man and woman raising children" (or something very close to those ideas).
This seems really disheartening to me that people are wanting to teach children some idealized version of life that doesn't exist.
However, it got worse. Driving home that night, NPR ran a feature on Cobb county, Georgia, where school board officials are involved in a lawsuit to keep stickers on public school science textbooks that say something to the effect of "This textbook contains information about evolution. This is only a theory, and this information should be approached with an open mind."
The effort is part of a movement to teach creationism and similar ideas in public school science classes. Not surprisingly, science teachers are against it, because those ideas aren't science. One of NPR's commentators summarized my initial respons best when he said that evolution is only a theory, much like gravity is only a theory. To me, denying scientific convention and ignoring overwhelming scientific evidence runs counter to science, instead of being science.
This is only part of my concern. What also disturbs me about both of these isn't just the content they want to replace and alter, but the movement to teach something other than health in health class and science in science class. What could come next?
This seems really disheartening to me that people are wanting to teach children some idealized version of life that doesn't exist.
However, it got worse. Driving home that night, NPR ran a feature on Cobb county, Georgia, where school board officials are involved in a lawsuit to keep stickers on public school science textbooks that say something to the effect of "This textbook contains information about evolution. This is only a theory, and this information should be approached with an open mind."
The effort is part of a movement to teach creationism and similar ideas in public school science classes. Not surprisingly, science teachers are against it, because those ideas aren't science. One of NPR's commentators summarized my initial respons best when he said that evolution is only a theory, much like gravity is only a theory. To me, denying scientific convention and ignoring overwhelming scientific evidence runs counter to science, instead of being science.
This is only part of my concern. What also disturbs me about both of these isn't just the content they want to replace and alter, but the movement to teach something other than health in health class and science in science class. What could come next?
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