Intelligent choices
Brevard School Board should toss aside textbooks that undermine scientific learning
Here’s a good editorial that gives me hope that there are, in fact, voices of reason out there.
There’s no debate in legitimate scientific circles that evolution is the bedrock biological principle and should be taught to public school students.
Indeed, two studies just published in the journal Nature offer even more evidence that species can and have evolved from common ancestors.
Crusaders who fear scientific knowledge may discredit religious belief, however, want to seed doubt about evolution in the minds of students by introducing unsubstantiated claims about the origins of life into biology class.
A federal judge in Dover, Pa., recently ruled that an attempt to mix faith-based intelligent design theory with hard science in the Dover school district was unconstitutional.
But Florida Education Commissioner John Winn ignored that message when he put a version of “Biology, the Dynamics of Life†that includes a section on divine origins on the list of state-approved science textbook choices.
The Brevard County school district is now reviewing those choices, with textbook committee recommendations to be presented to the School Board on Feb. 28.
We trust district officials to make curriculum decisions that best help students gain needed scientific literacy. That means tossing aside books that undermine the teaching of evolution by discussing intelligent design.
Beliefs about supernatural beginnings of life can be discussed in other courses, such as world cultures, but they have no place in biology class.
