Kansas BOE wants to lie to students - Part 3

Posted 15 August 2005 by Mike Dunford

It’s time for our next look at the Kansas Board of Education majority’s continuing crusade to push their own narrow-minded sectarian agenda at the expense of actual education. Today’s entry can be found on page 80 of the draft science standards (available as a pdf on the Kansas Department of Eduation’s website):

Grade 8-12 indicator 7: explains proposed scientific explanations of the origin of life as well as scientific criticisms of those explanations.

It’s worth noting at this point that this particular indicator is not present in the March 9^th draft of the science standards (also available as a pdf) - the one written by the science standards committee without excessive input from the elected BoE members. It is a recent addition by the Board of Education. I am not, however, planning to devote time and energy to discussing the indicator itself. My concern is more with the “additional specificity” points that they list with this new indicator.

2 Comments

Russell · 15 August 2005

...the Kansas Board of Education majority's continuing crusade to push their own narrow-minded sectarian agenda at the expense of actual education

I guess if I slog through all the posts on Kansas it will become clear. But just in case there's a simple answer some Kansas expert can provide, I'll ask anyway. In the Kangaroo Kourt hearings, the "good guys", represented by Pedro Iregonegaray (sp?), are "the majority", and the creationists, represented by Calvert, are "the minority". Here it's the reverse. Perhaps it's the difference between the balance of power on the whole BoE vs. that on a committee of the BoE?

Schmitt. · 15 August 2005

Russel, it's the Kansas Board of Education versus their own science standards revision committee. The majority of the science committee wrote the 'old' and pro evolution set of standards, they were the good guys. These were rejected by the majority of the Board of Education after the minority of the science committee filed a dissenting report.

The majority of the BoE then decided to form the kangaroo court and are now trying to adopt century old creationist canards into their standards.

-Schmitt.