{"id":2421,"date":"2016-02-01T18:00:53","date_gmt":"2016-02-01T23:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=2421"},"modified":"2016-02-01T18:08:07","modified_gmt":"2016-02-01T23:08:07","slug":"theyre-not-dead-yet-getting-to-word-out-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2421","title":{"rendered":"They’re not dead yet & Getting the word out there"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my previous post I said that the “instructional materials” bills in the state legislature don’t look like they’re going anywhere. But I also said that they can’t be considered dead yet. I was right:\u00c2\u00a0‘No bill is dead’ in Florida Senate Education, chairman says<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chairman John Legg told the Gradebook the bills still have a chance to move.<\/p>\n

“We are in Week 4 of session. No bill is dead,” Legg said, noting his committee is likely to meet at least twice more.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Florida Citizens for Science gets a brief mention:<\/p>\n

He said the instructional materials bill by Sen. Alan Hays is very complicated, with many details that could affect school and district decisions. Florida Citizens Alliance wants to see “revisionist history” removed from materials, for instance, while Florida Citizens for Science has battled the proposals as an effort to put creationism into science textbooks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But even if the bills finally appear on the committees’ schedules, there are a few more committee stops they have to make before they can be presented to the full House and Senate.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Jonathan Smith, Florida Citizens for Science president, is not standing idly by. He has a letter in the Lakeland Ledger<\/a> voicing our opposition to the bills. I’ll reproduce it in full here:<\/p>\n

As a taxpayer, would you like to see your own school district throw away millions of dollars and countless hours of media attention, just to appease ideologically driven special interest groups?<\/p>\n

Disguised by the smoke and mirrors diatribe of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153local control\u00e2\u20ac\u009d mantra, Sen. Alan Hays\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 bill (SB 1018 and the companion bill HB 899) would open the doors to endless and expensive headaches over what kinds of textbooks and other materials should be used in Florida\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s classrooms.<\/p>\n

The language in Hays\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 bill seems innocent and full of taxpayer empowerment.<\/p>\n

For example, parents can currently complain to the local school board if there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s anything objectionable in a textbook. But the bill, if passed into law, would give any taxpayer the additional superpower of taking the complaint to court if he or she didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get what they wanted out of the school board. Hays might as well call this bill the \u00e2\u20ac\u01532016 Trial Lawyers Employment Act.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

The bill would require instructional materials to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153provide a non inflammatory, objective and balanced viewpoint on all issues,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which sounds great.<\/p>\n

However, the reality is that some people will view biological evolution, which is accepted solid science, as inflammatory, when presented \u00e2\u20ac\u0153unbalanced\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by other non-science alternatives in the textbooks.<\/p>\n

One of the main organizations who helped write and promote these bills \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Florida Citizens Alliance \u00e2\u20ac\u201c has already gone on record saying as much. They are also opposed to students learning about climate change.<\/p>\n

Perhaps another appropriate name for Hay\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bill would be the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Special Interest Entitlement Act.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure creationists and global-warming deniers will rejoice!<\/p>\n

Jonathan P. Smith
\nPresident
\nFlorida Citizens for Science
\nLithia<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"not<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my previous post I said that the “instructional materials” bills in the state legislature don’t look like they’re going anywhere. But I also said that they can’t be considered dead yet. I was right:\u00c2\u00a0‘No bill is dead’ in Florida … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-D3","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2440,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2440","url_meta":{"origin":2421,"position":0},"title":"Session over; Instructional Materials bills dead","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"March 13, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"The Florida legislative session is mercifully over and the instructional materials bills we've been tracking are history. These ill-conceived bills would have changed the way textbooks and other educational tools are reviewed and selected, handing entirely too much power to well meaning but non-expert parents and not so well meaning,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Instructional Materials bills '16"","block_context":{"text":"Instructional Materials bills '16","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=31"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Textbooks-300x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2402,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2402","url_meta":{"origin":2421,"position":1},"title":"Update on instructional materials bills","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 18, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Two companion bills have been filed in the Florida Senate and House that have a lot of potential for disrupting education in Florida schools. These instructional materials bills have more than one focus, but the one most concerning to us at Florida Citizens for Science is the back door it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Instructional Materials bills '16"","block_context":{"text":"Instructional Materials bills '16","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=31"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Textbooks-300x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2431,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2431","url_meta":{"origin":2421,"position":2},"title":"Instructional Materials Bills Update","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"February 14, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"My column was published in the Community Voices section of today's Daytona Beach News Journal: Don't mix science, religion in public schools. It's a rebuttal to a previous column written by a Flagler County school board member. She supported the two very bad instructional materials bills currently languishing in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Instructional Materials bills '16"","block_context":{"text":"Instructional Materials bills '16","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=31"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2712,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2712","url_meta":{"origin":2421,"position":3},"title":"“They’re both theories”","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"May 2, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Welcome to the final week of the Florida legislative session. Today, the creationist-enabling Instructional Materials bill (SB 1210) is being debated on the Senate floor. (Don't know what I'm talking about? Check out the Instructional Materials bills '17 blog category here to find out why creationists, climate change deniers and\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 9 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 9 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2712#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2741,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2741","url_meta":{"origin":2421,"position":4},"title":"Nature notes one bad bill; no one notices the other","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"May 12, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The science journal Nature published an article about antiscience bills that have cropped up across America, with a special focus on our very own Sunshine State:\u00c2\u00a0Revamped 'anti-science' education bills in United States find success. The piece focuses on the instructional materials bill that pretty much sailed through the state House\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Instructional Materials bills '17"","block_context":{"text":"Instructional Materials bills '17","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=32"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2414,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2414","url_meta":{"origin":2421,"position":5},"title":"A little press about “instructional materials” bills","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 25, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"An Orlando Sentinel columnist takes apart several bills that Sen. Alan Hays has filed this year in the state legislature:\u00c2\u00a0Hays files wild bills in Senate. His bill about school instructional materials, which Florida Citizens for Science opposes, gets a mention: Hays wants parents to be able to inspect all \"instructional\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Instructional Materials bills '16"","block_context":{"text":"Instructional Materials bills '16","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=31"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2421"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2425,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421\/revisions\/2425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}