Scientists from as far away as the United Kingdom are appalled at Arizona Superintendent Diane Douglas’ attack on evolution.
The Association for Science Education, which represents the UK’s science teachers, says Douglas’ proposal to cast doubt about evolution would “undermine the scientific literacy of Arizona’s students.”
Meanwhile, the New York-based Teacher Institute of Evolutionary Science says Douglas’ revisions to the standards taught in science class “will handicap Arizona students.”
“Those who seek to weaken [evolution’s] teaching are doing so to insert religious ideas into science classrooms, an effort that has been rejected by the courts as contrary to America’s constitutional principles …,” Bertha Vazquez, TIES director and a middle school science teacher, wrote.
“Why would the leaders of a US state deny this knowledge to their own children?”
TIES is part of the Center for Inquiry, a New York-based non-profit focused on fostering a secular society.
For the last year, several dozen Arizona science teachers have been working to update the state’s science standards. This spring, Douglas’ Department of Education took a marking pen to those updates, striking or qualifying the word “evolution” wherever it occurred.
Science teachers, for example, want their high school biology students to be able to explain “how the process of evolution result(s) from natural selection.”
Douglas wants students to explain “how the process of evolution may result from natural selection.”
Science teachers have proposed teaching students that “changes resulting from natural diversity within a species lead to the selection of those individuals suited to survive under certain conditions.”
Douglas proposes to say that such changes “are thought to” lead to the selection of those individuals suited to survive …
Douglas has downplayed her revisions, saying she’s just changing a word here and there and certainly not trying to take evolution out of the state’s science standards.
She is, however, calling into question the basic scientific theory that an overwhelming majority of scientists say is the backbone of biology.
Read the full story at AZ Central
