NCSE’S LATEST IN EVOLUTION: EDUCATION AND OUTREACH
“Kentucky’s A-minus defense of evolution,” by NCSE’s Glenn Branch, was just published in Evolution: Education and Outreach. The abstract of his article: “A recent report from the Kentucky Department of Education summarizes and responds to comments from the public about the treatment of evolution in the Next Generation Science Standards, under consideration for adoption in Kentucky. The responses are assessed, receiving the overall grade of A-minus, and their usefulness as a model for teachers facing similar comments is discussed.”
Founded in 2008, Evolution: Education and Outreach seeks to promote the accurate understanding and comprehensive teaching of evolutionary theory for a wide audience. Starting with its first issue, NCSE regularly contributed a column under the rubric “Overcoming Obstacles to Evolution Education.” In 2013, the journal became completely open access, and NCSE plans to continue “Overcoming Obstacles to Evolution Education” under the new system. The first five volumes of Evolution:
Education and Outreach are now freely available as well.
For “Kentucky’s A-minus defense of evolution” (PDF), visit: http://www.evolution-outreach.com/content/pdf/1936-6434-6-29.pdf For the content of the journal from volume 6 (2013) onward, visit: http://www.evolution-outreach.com/ For the content of the journal from volume 1 (2008) to volume 5 (2012), visit: http://link.springer.com/journal/volumesAndIssues/12052HELP NCSE TO HELP SCIENCE EDUCATION ADVOCATES
Are you concerned about the integrity of science education in the United States? Are you worried about efforts to undermine the teaching of evolution and climate change? Are you willing to work with your neighbors to defend and improve the quality of science education in formal and informal education?
Over the next year, NCSE is planning a series of on-line trainings to enable people like you to support the integrity of science education in their own communities. You can help to make these the best trainings possible by taking a short on-line surveyabout what topics and issues are important to you.
For the survey, visit: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/7D5N7XZ For NCSE’s existing resources on taking action, visit: http://ncse.com/taking-actionUPDATE FROM TEXAS
The creationists and climate change deniers reviewing biology textbooks in Texas attracted the attention of the newspaper of record. “As Texas gears up to select biology textbooks for use by high school students over the next decade, the panel responsible for reviewing submissions from publishers has stirred controversy because a number of its members do not accept evolution and climate change,” The New York Times (September 28, 2013) reported.
The comments from the reviewers hostile to evolution and climate change were disclosed by NCSE and the Texas Freedom Network in a joint press release issued on September 9, 2013, as NCSE previously reported. Subsequently, NCSE’s Joshua Rosenau discussed a variety of these comments in detail on NCSE’s new Science League of America blog, devoting posts to debunking the comments relevant to Ernst Haeckel and embryology, climate change, and punctuated equilibrium.
The Times observed, “By questioning the science—often getting down to very technical details—the evolution challengers in Texas are following a strategy increasingly deployed by others around the country,” adding, “There is little open talk of creationism.” (One reviewer stated that “creation science” should be taught in the classroom, however.) “Instead they borrow buzzwords common in education, ‘critical thinking,’ saying there is simply not enough evidence to prove evolution.”
NCSE’s Joshua Rosenau attended, and testified at, the Texas state board of education’s hearing on the textbooks, held in Austin on September 17, 2003. His testimony is posted on the Science League of America blog, as is his report of the hearing. “I lost count over the four hours of testimony,” he observed in the latter, “but it felt like there were three or four speakers in support of evolution and climate change education for every creationist or climate change denier who spoke.”
The Times reported, “The publishers are considering changes,” quoting a spokesperson for Pearson as saying that the publisher adjusted the books but without compromising the integrity of the science. But the textbooks are only part of the equation. Rosenau told the Times, “Most educational decisions are made in the 17,000 school districts and by individual schoolteachers in the classroom, … [a]nd it is really hard to know what is happening there.”
The Texas state board of education is expected to make a final decision on the textbooks submitted for adoption in November 2013. The president of the Texas Freedom Network, Kathy Miller, expressed her worry about the outcome, telling the Times, “Utterly unqualified partisan politicians will look at what utterly unqualified citizens have said about a textbook and decide whether it meets the requirements of a textbook.” TFN’s Stand Up for Science campaign is urging the board to adopt the books.
For the story in The New York Times, visit: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/education/creationists-on-texas-panel-for-biology-textbooks.html For the joint press release from NCSE and TFN, visit: http://www.tfn.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=7651 For Rosenau’s blog posts about the objectionable comments, visit: http://ncse.com/blog/2013/09/texas-textbook-reviewers-ernst-haeckel-0015026 http://ncse.com/blog/2013/09/texas-textbook-reviews-climate-change-0015032 http://ncse.com/blog/2013/09/texas-textbooks-punctuated-equilibrium-0015043 For Rosenau’s blog posts about the hearing, visit: http://ncse.com/blog/2013/09/my-testimony-before-texas-board-education-0015045 http://ncse.com/blog/2013/09/texas-textbook-hearings-view-from-ground-0015062 For TFN’s Stand Up for Science campaign, visit: http://tfn.org/science And for NCSE’s previous coverage of events in Texas, visit: http://ncse.com/news/texasPOLLING CLIMATE IN RURAL NEBRASKA
“Most rural Nebraskans think global climate change is definitely happening,” according to the Nebraska Rural Poll. But “[r]ural Nebraskans are less likely to believe human activity is a significant cause of climate change this year than they were five years ago and are more likely to think current climate change is due to normal climate patterns.”
Asked, “Do you think that global climate change is happening?” 25% of respondents said definitely yes, 48% said yes somewhat, 1% said definitely no, and 14% said that they didn’t know.
Asked about the claim “[i]ncreased carbon dioxide and other gases released into the atmosphere will, if unchecked, lead to global climate change,” 59% of respondents agreed, 17% disagreed, and 25% neither agreed nor disagreed. In 2008, 67% agreed.
Asked about the claim “[h]uman activity, including industry and transportation, is a significant cause of climate change,” 54% of respondents agreed, 20% disagreed, and 26% neither agreed nor disagreed. In 2008, 65% agreed.
The poll was conducted by mail to 6320 randomly selected households in the 84 non-metropolitan counties of Nebraska (all but Cass, Dakota, Dixon, Douglas, Lancaster, Sarpy, Saunders, Seward, and Washington counties); there were 2317 responses (a 37% response rate). The margin of error was +/- 2%.
For the Nebraska Rural Poll report (PDF), visit: http://ruralpoll.unl.edu/pdf/13waterandclimate.pdf And for NCSE’s collection of polls and surveys on climate change, visit: http://ncse.com/polls/polls-climate-changeANTI-NGSS LAWSUIT FILED IN KANSAS
Are the Next Generation Science Standards unconstitutional? A complaint filed in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas on September 26, 2013, alleges so. The complaint in COPE et al. v. Kansas State Board of Education et al.contends that the NGSS and the Framework for K-12 Science Education (on which the NGSS are based) “will have the effect of causing Kansas public schools to establish and endorse a non-theistic religious worldview … in violation of the Establishment, Free Exercise, and Speech Clauses of the First Amendment, and the Equal Protection Clauses of the 14th Amendment” (pp. 1-2). The plaintiffs ask for a declaratory judgment in their favor and for an injunction prohibiting the implementation of the NGSS in Kansas or, failing that, an injunction prohibiting the implementation of the sections of the NGSS to which they object.
NCSE’s Joshua Rosenau told the Associated Press (September 26, 2013) that it was a familiar argument, but “no one in the legal community has put much stock in it.” He added, “They’re trying to say anything that’s not promoting their religion is promoting some other religion,” and dismissed the argument as “silly.” Steven Case, director of the University of Kansas’s Center for Science Education, concurred, citing previous court rulings as evidence that the new lawsuit “won’t hold up.” “This is about as frivolous as lawsuits get,” Case told the Associated Press. The Kansas state board of education voted 8-2 to accept the Next Generation Science Standards on June 11, 2013, as NCSE previously reported, and the lawsuit is evidently attempting to undo the decision.
The complaint alleges that the NGSS and the Framework “seek to cause students to embrace a non-theistic Worldview … by leading very young children to ask ultimate questions about the cause and nature of life and the universe … and then using a variety of deceptive devices and methods that will lead them to answer the questions with only materialistic/atheistic explanations. … The effect … is to cause the students to ultimately ‘know’ and ‘understand’ that the student is not a design or a creation made for a purpose, but rather is just a ‘natural object’ that has emerged from the random interactions of matter, energy and the physical forces via unguided evolutionary processes which are the core tenets of Religious (‘secular’) Humanism” (p. 15). Both the Big Bang and evolution are emphasized as problematic.
Conspicuously absent from the complaint are any mentions of the relevant case law. For instance, in Crowley v. Smithsonian Institution (1980), the court affirmed the trial court’s conclusion that the Smithsonian’s evolutionary displays do not “create a religion of secularism.” In McLean v. Arkansas (1982), the court commented, “it is clearly established in the case law, and perhaps also in common sense, that evolution is not a religion and that teaching evolution does not violate the Establishment Clause.” In Peloza v. Capistrano School District (1994), the court characterized the Supreme Court’s decision in Edwards v. Aguillard (1987) as holding “unequivocally that while the belief in a divine creator of the universe is a religious belief, the scientific theory that higher forms of life evolved from lower forms is not.”
The lead plaintiff is COPE, Citizens for Objective Public Education. In June 2012, as NCSE previously reported, COPE submitted a critique of the then current draft of the Next Generation Science Standards to the Kansas state board of education. Its vice president Anne Lassey told the Associated Press (June 12, 2012) that the group had members around the nation, although it was founded only in March 2012. At the time, COPE’s president was Jorge Fernandez, a self-proclaimed young-earth creationist with publications to his credit in Journal of Creation and on the True.Origin Archive website. Fernandez was evidently replaced by Robert P. Lattimer, who was involved with Science Excellence for All Ohioans, a creationist group that tried to undermine the presentation of evolution in Ohio’s state science standards in 2002.
Fernandez and Lattimer are not the only people involved with COPE with a history of creationist activity. Its vice president Anne Lassey is married to its treasurer Greg Lassey, who was one of the authors of the so-called minority report of the committee that revised Kansas’s state science standards in 2005; the report systematically deprecated the scientific status of evolution. Albert J. Gotch, a member of COPE’s board, was the executive director of the Akron Fossils & Science Center, a small young-earth creationist “museum” in the Akron, Ohio, area. Joseph Renick, a member of COPE’s board, is the executive director of the New Mexico branch of the Intelligent Design Network, which periodically supports antievolution legislation in the state: in 2011, for example, the group paid for a full-page advertisement in the Albuquerque Journal in support of a (failed) “academic freedom” bill.
Two of the attorneys representing COPE also have a history of creationist activity. John H. Calvert is the founder of the Intelligent Design Network. Long active in efforts to undermine the teaching of evolution in Kansas, Calvert suggested the infamous “kangaroo court” hearings on proposed revisions to the Kansas state science standards in 2005, which the scientific community boycotted. In 2005, he also testified before a Pennsylvania legislative subcommittee in favor of a (failed) bill that would have allowed school boards to include “intelligent design” in any curriculum containing evolution. Kevin T. Snider of the Pacific Justice Institute helped to represent Jeanne Caldwell in her (failed) lawsuit, filed in 2005, alleging that the University of California Museum of Paleontology’s Understanding Evolution website was in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
For the complaint (PDF), visit: http://ncse.com/files/pub/legal/COPE_v_Kansas_BOE/20130926_Complaint.pdf For the Associated Press article (via the Wichita Eagle), visit: http://www.kansas.com/2013/09/26/3023148/lawsuit-filed-in-kan-to-block.html And for NCSE’s previous coverage of events in Kansas, visit: http://ncse.com/news/kansasThanks for reading. And don’t forget to visit NCSE’s website— http://ncse.com—where you can always find the latest news on evolution and climate education and threats to them.
Glenn Branch Deputy Director National Center for Science Education, Inc. 420 40th Street, Suite 2 Oakland, CA 94609-2509 510-601-7203 x305 fax: 510-601-7204 800-290-6006 branch@ncse.com http://ncse.com
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