Education Icon Education
Evolution Icon Evolution

Gutting Texas Science Standards — Bad for Everyone

Texas longhorn.jpeg

In an op-ed in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Jonathan Witt weighs in on the current Texas science standards streamlining process (described previously here at Evolution News).
Calling out those trying to gut the standards on evolution, Dr. Witt describes the quality evolution education the science TEKS promote. He notes:

Some members of the committee charged with the revision — along with various lobbyists — are using this process as a pretext to strip from the science standards any evidence against evolution.

That would be bad for Texas, bad for science and bad for our kids.

Our current science standards, the best in the nation, were adopted overwhelmingly by the State Board of Education, and they call for students to analyze and evaluate the actual evidence for and against Darwin’s theory rather than to ingest it as unquestioned dogma.

That’s too even-handed for some.

In a letter to the state board, pro-Darwin Kathy Miller of the misnamed Texas Freedom Network insists that the revision committee just wants to get rid of the “junk science.”

In reality, the evidence she wants to airbrush away comes from leading scientists, much of it in peer-reviewed science journals. But Miller doesn’t want Darwinism criticized, so she calls the evidence junk.

Her use of the word junk is ironic.

Evolutionists long insisted that much of the DNA in living things was “junk DNA,” useless information built up from the Darwinian trial-and-error process of random mutations and natural selection.

Meanwhile, some biologists critical of Neo-Darwinism predicted this “junk DNA” wasn’t junk at all but had crucial functions. They’ve since been proven right and the Darwinists wrong.

Why should that fact and others like it be hidden from students?

Read more here. Let’s hope more Texas media provide balanced reporting on this issue.

Image: Texas longhorn © Lindsay_Helms — stock.adobe.com.

Sarah Chaffee

Now a teacher, Sarah Chaffee served as Program Officer in Education and Public Policy at Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. She earned her B.A. in Government. During college she interned at Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler’s office and for Prison Fellowship Ministries. Before coming to Discovery, she worked for a private land trust with holdings in the Southwest.

Share

Tags

LocalNationTexas