Halellujah: The Texas Science War Ends in a Draw

Praise the Lord and pass the aspirin: the Texas creationism wars are over.

I'm as weary as the next person of the Creationists on the Texas State Board of Education trying to elevate pseudo-science in textbooks across America. So I'm glad to report that the standards battle is over - at least until the textbook adoption process begins in 2011. Steven Schafersman, president of Texas Citizens for Science, live-blogged the three-days public hearings and final vote on the standards (Day One here, Day Two here, Day Three here), and gave this summary when it ended:

What is the bottom line? Did we win or lose? Neither. We got rid of the worst language, but a great deal of qualifying language remains. I am not going to claim either victory or defeat. I realize that Casey Luskin of Discovery Institute will declare complete, unqualified victory, but it is not that for them. Neither is it for us. The standards adopted were generally good, but there are several that are flawed, fortunately most in minor ways that textbook authors and publishers can deal with. I think we can work around the few flawed standards. But the point is that there shouldn't be ANY flawed standards. The science standards as submitted by the science writing teams were excellent and flaw-free. All the flaws were added by politically unscrupulous SBOE members with an extreme right-wing religious agenda to support Creationism.

This will become apparent in 2011 when the Biology textbooks come up for adoption. Rule 3A and several other poor amendments in Biology--all the contribution of SBOE members who know nothing about science but a lot about pseudoscience--will be used to attack Biology textbooks. Cynthia Dunbar said so: "All we need is Rule 3A as now written and we have everything we want" (I am paraphrasing, but she said this in so many words). Gentle Readers, this is not the way to develop educational policy in one of the most wealthy and powerful state in the most wealthy and powerful country in the world in the 21st century. The process you just experienced, by reading my live blog columns, was deplorable and should be deeply embarrassing to every Texas citizen.

The policy (science standards) that resulted are not the best they could be. They are acceptable but could have been pseudoscience- and Creationism influence-free. However, I can also say the standards could be much worse. The votes were so close, and several members switched their votes back and forth several times, sometimes voting with the antiscience radical right wing members and sometimes with the pro-science members, that anything could have happened. I suppose I should be grateful the results are not worse. (full post)

(Salon.com is more dour here.)

I listened to the live-stream audio of the hearings for a good few hours myself, and agree that they were an embarrassment. Beyond the evolution-creationism debates, there were equally eye-popping ed-board jeremiads against teachers for using the word - *gasp* - capitalism in the social studies standards, instead of the right-wing politically correct free enterprise, as if "capitalism" is a dirty word in their book. (These folks probably banned "French fries" in favor of "freedom fries" in their health and nutrition standards after Bush invaded Iraq in '03.)

Bad curriculum and teacher-bashing redux:

And it all comes back to the point made repeatedly over the last weeks and months on this space: the open season on teachers and their unions as the Big Problem in education leaves so many bigger and more destructive prey out of the ed-scapegoat-hunters' sights. Our boards of education don't deserve the sheltered immunity they enjoy. The good Texans' creationism and "free enterprise" agendas are the proof in the pudding.

I'm a sucker for a good analogy, and teacher Mark Ahlness finds a gem at the end of this well-argued post:

This incredible article in Education Week reports on a study - and leads with this - that teachers are the reason new technologies are not being used in our schools:

Teachers, for the most part, are not taking advantage of the tools that middle and high school students have widely adopted for home and school purposes,....

Wrong. We teachers are, by and large, not allowed to use new technologies in our classrooms. Good grief, people, look at school district policies. They are set by administrators and school board members, not by teachers.

Guess what, they're not set by teacher unions, either.

So I say back off, and get to work fixing what's wrong. Do not start by trying to fire teachers. We are not the problem. That's like trying to pin the world financial crisis on bank tellers.

Image by Cayusa