Blast from Hillsborough’s past

Posted on June 19, 2015 by Brandon Haught

In the early 1980s Florida’s own Hillsborough County School Board had voted to mandate the balancing of evolution with scientific creationism. The curriculum was written, approved and ready to go for classroom use when, just a few weeks before implementation, two court cases brought everything to a screeching halt. One case was Edwards v. Aguillard, and the other was McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education.

Today marks the 28th anniversary of the Edwards v. Aguillard decision, which reminded me that I had promised on the Going Ape website that I would regularly upload documents from my book research. I hadn’t done that in quite a while. So, today I dumped about 15 files about Hillsborough County’s creationism curriculum onto the page for your viewing pleasure. You can see the files at a recent blog post or on the main timeline page. I think you’ll really enjoy them!

About Brandon Haught

Communications Director for Florida Citizens for Science.
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5 Responses to Blast from Hillsborough’s past

  1. Ivorygirl says:
    June 19, 2015 at 2:13 pm

    “Scientific Creationism is NOT based upon the Bible, or Torah or the Koran or any other religious documents or doctrines, only on scientific fact” . Really and those facts would be ????????

  2. Pierce R. Butler says:
    June 19, 2015 at 11:10 pm

    The file for the slide-show script that was to be shown to Hillsborough students refers to four “theories” of “origins” – NeoDarwinism, Punctuated Equilibrium, “Creative Evolution”, and Scientific Creationism.

    Plainly the scriptwriter didn’t know enough science to tell that “Punk Eek” is just a subset of the Modern Synthesis (my best guess as to the meaning of “NeoDarwinism”), and was just following orders from the school board in listing creationism – but …

    What’s “Creative Evolution”?

  3. Pierce R. Butler says:
    June 19, 2015 at 11:23 pm

    I answered my own question by going to the pictures accompanying the script.

    For the purely masochistic:

    A supernatural influence originated and may actively continue to maintain all of the matter and energy in the universe and the natural laws which govern it. This supernatural influence may continue to act in the universe. Some believed the supernatural influence created the natural processes of chemical and biological evolution and from these originated the diversity of living things on earth. Others believe that the diversity of living things may have been brought about partially by evolution and partially by subsequent creative acts.

    Real scientifical, yup. Somebody must have invented this just to provide school boards with a Genesis-free creationism.

  4. Ivorygirl says:
    June 20, 2015 at 8:12 am

    Pierce, You forget, the Flying Spaghetti Monster works in mysterious ways.

  5. Chris says:
    June 21, 2015 at 4:04 pm

    Brandon, Wow good job.

    I just ordered my copy of Going Ape. I’d planned to get one earlier at one of your book signing events but my time has never been right to allow it.

    I’ll be looking forward to your coming updates as they progress.
    With four in ten Americans believing the creationist view of origins you should never run out of material.

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