Rio Rancho: School Employees Union opposes "Science" Policy

The Rio Rancho (NM) School District adopted a slickly-worded "Science" policy in August, which many fear will open up the classrooms of this Intel bedroom community to "Intelligent Design." (See earlier reports on the Thumb here, here, here, here, and here.) Now, the school employees union has sued to stop the policy, and the Saga has made the National News. Elaine D. BriseÃ±o of the Albuquerque Journal, in an Oct. 15th, 2005 article titled "Rio Rancho School Evolution Policy Challenged" (subscription)reported that

The Rio Rancho school employees union wants the school district to shelve its new science policy relating to evolution until it consults teachers about how it will affect them in the classroom. Failing to do so violates state law, says union attorney Andrew Lotrich, who has filed a complaint with the Rio Rancho Labor Relations Board. The 1,200-member Rio Rancho School Employees' Union wants the labor board to remove the policy from the books until it is brought to the table as part of ongoing contract negotiations. ...

More of the article is available on the NMSR Rio Rancho Updates Page. Last week, USA Today's web site included an AP article which noted that

As a federal judge hears arguments over whether a Pennsylvania school district can include "intelligent design" in its biology curriculum, Dan Barbour fears the New Mexico high school where he works could face a similar showdown. The school board in Rio Rancho, N.M., voted in August to allow the discussion of alternative theories to evolution in high school science class. Critics say that could mean intelligent design, and some faculty are averse to teaching a concept whose scientific validity has been questioned, said Barbour, the school's science and math director. "The thing that makes me nervous is that in the classroom a teacher is to be unbiased, but students are allowed to express their opinions. Can a teacher remain unbiased? Can we keep it from becoming a preaching session?" he said. Science educators around the nation are closely monitoring the trial ...

Our own esteemed Professor Steve Steve is mistakenly identified as a "panda puppet" in the accompanying photo. Stay Tuned to the Thumb for future developments.

1 Comment

W. Kevin Vicklund · 19 October 2005

My wife (an anthropologist currently on a Fulbright grant) sent me this lovely gem. She got it from Readerville, a site for readers, writers, and publishers. How long before Rio Rancho develops these new English standards?

All English teachers should be required to include Babelism as a valid alternate theory to Linguisticism, whenever the origins of the English language is discussed. Oh, of course we can expect opposition from the entrenched vested interests... a language is a complex thing. The odds that some first speaker could randomly string together a complex series of sounds, and then multiply this by the odds that someone else would UNDERSTAND him, and the probability could be calculated to be less than 1 in 10^500. That's a one with five hundred zeroes. A statistical impossibility. Obviously, the first language must have a designer: God. Third, there is NO evidence that transitional languages ever existed. What use is half a language? A noun without verbs conveys no meaning! Sure, there is middle and old- English. But these are ENGLISH! A complete nontransitional language. We do not deny that micro-linguistics can happen, but this process can create only DIALECTS. There is NO EVIDENCE that a series of random micro-linguistic events can create a WHOLE NEW LANGUAGE. I'll believe in Macro-linguistics when I see a video tape of a child growing up in an Eskimo village suddenly become fluent in Armenian! It takes A LOT MORE FAITH to believe in atheistic linguisticism than the truth of Babelism. So join me in the crusade: Babelism must be included in the public school English curriculum.