Call to Action project

We need your help! Florida Citizens for Science has launched a “call to action” project: All I Want for Christmas is a Good Science Education.

Since the holiday season is upon us, why not spread an educational message along with your Christmas cheer? We need to let the Florida Board of Education know that evolution is an important scientific concept that our children need to know, and that other supposed “theories,” such as intelligent design, are not. Why is this an issue? Because evolution is not in the current state science standards, but is in a new draft of the standards that will go before the BoE in January. Unfortunately, evolution has become an issue for some of those Board members. Please browse through other recent posts on this blog to learn more about this situation.

We want you to send Christmas cards that include personal messages supporting good science education to the members of the state Board of Education. This project will demonstrate that there are as many, if not more, people in Florida who support good science education as there are people against it. We want to tell them that we don’t want our state to become the laughingstock of the nation like other states were in past years when confronted with similar situations.

Don’t worry about your cards getting to the recipients too late for Christmas. The main point is to flood their offices with our message: we value a first-rate science education for our children! Additionally, depending on the kind of Christmas card you send, you can get across the message that it’s OK to have religious faith and still accept evolution.

Visit the web page linked to above and get started!

About Brandon Haught

Communications Director for Florida Citizens for Science.
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4 Responses to Call to Action project

  1. Kevin Folta says:

    “it’s OK to have religious faith and still accept evolution.”

    Don’t soften this so much to make it palatable for anti-science supporters. Science is a discipline based on hypothesis testing, performing appropriate experiments and interpretation of data within the context of the literature. Period.

    It is not simply “OK” to “accept evolution”. Evolution is the clear interpretation of an overwhelming body of independent and reproducible research. It is the foundation of biology and students must understand that. In fact, the evolution /ID discussion (it is not a debate) should be used to illustrate how to separate science from magical wishful thinking.

    As a science educator we need to elevate our rhetoric and adhere to an unshakable position- not because we’re afraid of becoming a “laughingstock of the nation”, but because it is our job to teach facts.

    Thanks for everything you do. I write this just to sharpen the approach, as this is not a place where we can meet anti-science proponents even part way. When they have evidence, facts and equally tested and supported theories they are welcome at the table of scientific discourse. Until then, don’t entertain the nonsense.

    Kevin

  2. ABO says:

    Entertaining nonsense may not be the path the state board of education has chosen.

    However, pretending anyone who doesn’t except partial to people evolutionary theory as a scientific fact, are anti-science is asinine at best. And to continue trying to sell the thought this form of evolutionary theory is compatible with Biblical history or as was stated, “it’s OK to have religious faith and still accept evolution,” is foolishness.

    Anyone who has even a minimal understanding of evolutionary theory as presented and the Bible knows the two are totally incompatible.

    The dummying down of our society has accelerated with the religious doctrine that man has descended from ape like creatures. With each new transitional fabrication called evidence, science and science teachers are becoming a laughingstock. Teachers should have the guts and the brains to investigate this controversial issue and do the right thing.

    Science teachers should be required to teach science not imagination.

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  4. DLE says:

    I live in New York which, despite its many other strange problems, seems to suffer less from anti-science endarkenment thinking than some other parts of the country. From where I sit, it’s hard to understand why, exactly, twenty-first-century people in a liberal democracy wish to inflict a twelfth-century education on their children. Yet there are people in state after state who use every political tool available to them to try to force public officials to do just that. And not just to their own children, but to everyone’s.

    Come on, Florida, stand up for your children’s right to an education that will give them reliable insights into how the world really works and prepare them to deal effectively with the challenges they’ll face.

    It’s taken so many years of struggle by many people to roll back the dark ages. Don’t let those among you who are frightened by the light take your children with them back into darkness. Write to the members of your State Board of Education and demand twenty-first-century educational standards for Florida’s children.

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