*lurk* *lurk*

*swims slowly through the depths*

*surfaces*

*decloaks*

Hi. Still here. Busy. "Free time" is a foreign concept. Starting grad school app. Killing students this weekend at gaming con. Grading characters. No, wait...

Breathing. Eating. Sleeping.

*cloaks*

*submerges*

*goes back to swimming the deep currents*

Okay, this one's a VERY CRANKY update.

In a moment of web-freedom, I decide to check the news. Given my interests in teaching and in biological sciences, I decide to go do my daily blood-pressure test by reading a CNN article about the vote in Kansas next Tuesday about the new school science-teaching standards. Yes, we know that most of the Kansas state schoolboard is a bunch of fundamentalist doodieheads, and the article is generally positive about how the NSF, the NAST, and others are hosting an exhibit promoting evolution.

But then I come across this little gem of a paragraph.

Now, the new Kansas standards, which outline what teachers should teach and test on, leave evolutionary principles in the curriculum but insert phrasing that encourages students to question their validity....

Okay, fair enough. This seems to be what they're managing to get away with in several states (unfortunately, Michigan included).

...The standards also delete certain text about how science is defined.

EXCUSE ME? They've recognized that they can't win the language battle ("Creation Science" is a hypothesis, cannot be empirically proven, and so the "Theory" of Intelligent Design is not a theory at all but a pipe dream), so they're deliberately going to FAIL TO EDUCATE their students. They are denying those children the knowledge of what science means, in this day and age, and how it's appropriately practiced, so that they can promote their obsolete and fallacious argument?!?!? Hell, even the Holy Mother Catholic Church has acknowledged that the Bible's tale of creation is open to modern interpretation.

Yes, the Kansas School Board may well put the 'DUH' into fundamentalism. Personally, I think that they should really change their name to reflect their real interests--they aren't fundamentalists, rather they're atavists.

So, intelligent and thoughtful Kansas science teachers, I encourage you to practice civil disobedience and wholly ignore whatever crap the Kansas state school board hands to you.