Hard to be a loser?

It must be hard to work at the Discovery Institute. They’re constantly losing and so have a tendency to be quite whiny. Casey Luskin noticed the minor issue we had with the Life on an Ocean Planet textbook here in Florida. He didn’t take the news very well.

“They want pro-Darwin-only, and that’s all they’re going to allow. As soon as you step out of line, they have to basically rip those pages out of the textbook [and] go and burn those pages. They do not want students learning about anybody that raises scientific challenges to evolution.”

Basically rip and burn, eh? No, we just corrected grossly inaccurate information. That’s all. And I wouldn’t even say we’re “pro-Darwin,” either. Darwin got plenty of things wrong in his time. Rather, we’re pro-science.

Luskin also doesn’t like our state science standards that were adopted in 2008.

“Florida has some of the most dogmatic science standards in the United States that really hamstring teachers from mentioning any scientific discussion of some of the weaknesses in evolution.”

Fantasy weaknesses don’t belong in the science standards or the science classroom, Luskin. We’re proud of our new standards, including the extensive Nature of Science section:

SC.912.N.1.1: Define a problem based on a specific  body of knowledge, for example: biology, chemistry, physics, and earth/space science, and do the following:

1. pose questions about the natural world,
2. conduct systematic observations,
3. examine books and other sources of information to see what is already known,
4. review what is known in light of empirical evidence,
5. plan investigations,
6. use tools to gather, analyze, and interpret data (this includes the use of measurement in metric and other systems, and also the generation and interpretation of graphical representations of data, including data tables and graphs),
7. pose answers, explanations, or descriptions of events,
8. generate explanations that explicate or describe natural phenomena (inferences),
9. use appropriate evidence and reasoning to justify these explanations to others,
10. communicate results of scientific investigations, and
11. evaluate the merits of the explanations produced by others.

Anything added to the standards specifically addressing the questioning of evolution is unnecessary and an obvious attempt to insert a specific set of religious views into the science classroom.  Quit your whining.

About Brandon Haught

Communications Director for Florida Citizens for Science.
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6 Responses to Hard to be a loser?

  1. DSW says:

    It makes me proud to know Luskin is particularly ticked off by the Florida standards. It means we did our job well!

  2. James F says:

    I’m sure any day now Luskin will present the “scientific challenges” to evolution. Any day now.

  3. Pierce R. Butler says:

    It’s been over a month since the last post here.

    Brandon, are you okay?

  4. Brandon Haught says:

    I’m here, just insanely busy. Finishing up some tough college work. I’ll be going into the classroom for my internship in January! I’ll be a bone fide biology teacher real soon now!

  5. Chris says:

    Brandon, why don’t you change the site configuration to something like Kansas Citizens For Science. Topics could be disused by members without putting pressure on you. Just a thought.

  6. If you can read downthrough all these feedback and find this one can you please tell me know where you got the blog tempalte from? I would like to use the same one on my website.

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