[IP] more on book burnings are next- an affirmative response to pro-creationist "science teaching"
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Lin, Herb" <HLin@xxxxxxx>
Date: November 16, 2004 11:25:04 AM EST
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx, Ip <ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: [IP] more on book burnings are next- an affirmative
response to pro-creationist "science teaching"
Dave - for IP if you like. It may be an affirmative way to fight
creationism in the schools.
Herb
==
An affirmative response to creationist/intelligent design
mandates in the curriculum
Various state decisions to eliminate evolution from science curricula
and to promote creationism and "intelligent design" demands an
effective response from the scientific community. In the past,
scientists have been quite vocal in their condemnation of such efforts,
but more is needed.
One approach that would make a most powerful statement against the
state-sponsored lunacy is for collective action by the nation's
colleges and universities. Nearly all of these institutions of higher
learning require at least a year of high school science for admission,
and that year of high school science is usually biology. Biology
without evolution hardly counts as science, and thus does not logically
fulfill any university's admission requirement for science.
The colleges and universities of the nation could make an enormously
powerful statement about the illegitimacy of biology without evolution
by refusing to count as an academic subject any high school biology
course taught in states that have mandated the teaching of creationism
or intelligent design in biology courses. Exceptions could be granted
if students demonstrated adequate exposure to biology's fundamental
principles, including evolution, perhaps through an acceptable score on
a national biology achievement test. Alternatively, and perhaps more
subversively, exceptions could also be granted if transcripts were
accompanied by written statements from the high schools of origin that
evolution was indeed the central focus of the biology courses appearing
on the transcript.
In the past, statements and publications about evolution and
creationism/intelligent design from mainstream scientists have amounted
to not much more than hand-wringing. Today, the univerisites and
colleges of the nation have a golden opportunity to strike a blow for
reason and sanity.
Herbert Lin
Views are mine alone, not those of any institution with which I may be
affiliated.
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