Here’s why you need to get involved

Recap: Florida’s public school science standards from 1996 are being completely revamped. The current standards don’t mention evolution, but the new draft standards do so prominently. This has stirred up the anti-evolution crowd, including several education system decision-makers. The real story here is that the science standards overall have been dramatically improved. Unfortunately, the anti-science folks are turning the spotlight off of this improvement and onto the heartburn they have over evolution. Here is a list of decision-makers and other influential people who have gone on record as being in favor of including “other theories,” mainly the creationist Trojan horse intelligent design, alongside evolution.

Yesterday, I posted about a story in the Florida Baptist Witness that is rallying the troops to shoot down established science. I had said that there was little new information in that story. I was wrong. Mike O’Risal pointed out on his blog that there is something very interesting at the tail end of that story:

Kemple distributed to SBOE members a letter and legal memorandum by attorney David Gibbs and curriculum expert Francis Grubbs critiquing the science standards.

“We are concerned about the scientific accuracy of the Florida standards and also about the potential some of these proposed terms might have for requiring only one particular belief system in Florida classrooms, which would be an unconstitutional violation of the Establishment Clause,” write Gibbs and Grubbs.

David Gibbs had made a name for himself before. Here’s what O’Risal clues us in to:

It turns out that David Gibbs, the same David Gibbs who helped get right-wing congressmen to call an emergency session in the middle of the night to stop Terri Schiavo being put to rest, and the same David Gibbs who is currently representing Nathaniel Abraham, the Woods Hole Creationist, has also managed to find himself a place in the spotlight as a leader in the effort by Creationists in Florida to insert religious indoctrination into science classes.

Here’s a bit more about Gibbs’ involvement in the Schiavo case. And here’s information about Gibbs’ involvement in the Nathaniel Abraham case.

Reader, I hope you are not on the sidelines just watching what is happening to Florida’s science education. Get involved. Now.