{"id":2951,"date":"2017-11-20T13:43:59","date_gmt":"2017-11-20T18:43:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=2951"},"modified":"2017-11-24T10:45:03","modified_gmt":"2017-11-24T15:45:03","slug":"controversial-theories-science-education-bill-filed-in-florida-senate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2951","title":{"rendered":"“Controversial theories” science education bill filed in Florida senate"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got a live one.<\/p>\n

This past Friday Sen. Dennis Baxley<\/a> filed a bill in our state legislature concerning public education. Senate Bill 966<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s purpose is to revise \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the Next Generation Sunshine State Standards; providing that such standards are the minimum baseline core content standards for K-12 public schools.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In other words, Baxley would like the use of our state standards to be only the minimum school districts should strive for. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re encouraged to consider adopting their own set of standards that are \u00e2\u20ac\u0153equivalent to or better than these [state] standards.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

What is that all about? Baxley wants school districts to go beyond the basic standards. He wants to allow school districts to raise the bar, so to speak, and challenge schools and their students with more rigorous standards.<\/p>\n

Well, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what Baxley is trying to sell us. But we can see what he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s really after by reading further into the bill<\/a>. Go to page three, lines 62 to 66.<\/p>\n

62 (b) Science standards must establish specific curricular
\n63 content for, at a minimum, the nature of science, earth and
\n64 space science, physical science, and life science. Controversial<\/strong>
\n65 theories and concepts must be taught in a factual, objective,<\/strong>
\n66 and balanced manner<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ah, yes, good ol\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 “controversial theories.”<\/p>\n

Where did this bill come from? Baxley clearly is working closely with the creationist, climate-change-denying group Florida Citizens Alliance. They had announced last month they were working on this bill<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And they found a wonderful sponsor for their bill. Baxley has a history of disliking evolution lessons in schools. He was a representative in the state house back in 2005 when he sponsored an infamous bill titled The Academic Freedom Bill of Rights. That bill would have prevented \u00e2\u20ac\u0153biased indoctrination\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the classroom dictator.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In defense of that bill he related an upsetting personal story of a Florida State University professor ranting against creationism in class. You can read more about that bill in chapter 8 of my book Going Ape: Florida\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Battles over Evolution in the Classroom<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2008 we here at Florida Citizens for Science were deeply involved in the brawl over the inclusion of evolution in the new state science standards. Baxley was then executive director of the Christian Coalition of Florida and he had a firm opinion about the issue<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153There is no justification for singling out evolution for special skepticism or critical analysis,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d wrote Richard T. O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Grady, executive director of the American Institute of Biological Sciences in a Feb. 8 letter to the Board of Education. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Its strength as a scientific theory matches that of the theory of gravitation, atomic theory and the germ theory.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

The response from Dennis Baxley, executive director of the Christian Coalition of Florida: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in error.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153At one time, the scientific community thought that for good health, you should attach leaches to your body,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Baxley, a former state representative from Ocala. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re just asking them to leave the door open a little bit\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for other evidence to be considered.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not all. Baxley also sponsored last session’s Religious Liberties in Schools bill that successfully passed into Florida law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the Florida Senate, her partner in this quest is State Sen. Dennis Baxley, an Ocala Republican who owns a string of funeral homes and was the former executive director of the Christian Coalition of Florida.<\/p>\n

Baxley\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a fan of evolution, and thinks it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unfair that Florida\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s public school children are being exposed to a science curriculum that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t allow that the earth is just 6,000 years old.<\/p>\n

They were the guiding hands that successfully passed a bill that would expand the role of religion in Florida\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s public schools to levels that have alarmed the American Civil Liberties Union, the Florida Citizens for Science and the Americans United for Separation of Church and State.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are plenty of other things in this new controversial theories bill about other academic subjects that could potentially raise alarms for those teachers and subject matter experts. But our focus is, of course, the clear attack on science education, specifically evolution and climate change. This Washington Post article from earlier this year<\/a> briefly explains the purpose of these types of bills:<\/p>\n

These bills are worded as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153academic freedom\u00e2\u20ac\u009d bills, but they really are efforts to present foundational science as controversial. For example, evolution is the animating principle of modern biology, but these laws attempt to allow creationism and evolution to be debated in a science classroom as though they had equal scientific basis. There is no scientific basis to creationist thinking.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is developing into an all out war against science education in Florida. New laws about the challenging of textbooks (see our Instructional Materials bills ’17 blog category<\/a>) and religious liberties (see our Religious Liberties Act ’17 blog category<\/a>) are meant to chip away at classroom science instruction and now this newly proposed bill is trying to blast a hole right through its heart.<\/p>\n

Are you ready to help us fight back?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got a live one. This past Friday Sen. Dennis Baxley filed a bill in our state legislature concerning public education. Senate Bill 966\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s purpose is to revise \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the Next Generation Sunshine State Standards; providing that such standards are the … 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":[34],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-LB","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3395,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3395","url_meta":{"origin":2951,"position":0},"title":"“Controversial Theories” bill returns to Florida senate","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 14, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"A bill was pre-filed for the 2019 legislative session in the Florida senate that would impact the standards for all academic subjects, especially science. The bill proposes allowing school districts to adopt their own sets of educational standards if they are equal to or more rigorous than the state's educational\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Controversial Theories bill 2019"","block_context":{"text":"Controversial Theories bill 2019","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=36"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3417,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3417","url_meta":{"origin":2951,"position":1},"title":"Florida Senator: schools need to teach ‘different worldviews’ on issues like evolution and climate change","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 29, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Senator Dennis Baxley filed Senate Bill 330 recently, a piece of legislation that puts the teaching of evolution and climate change in Florida public schools directly in his line of fire. Up until now, all we knew for sure was that he filed a bill that would allow school districts\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Controversial Theories bill 2019"","block_context":{"text":"Controversial Theories bill 2019","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=36"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2993,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2993","url_meta":{"origin":2951,"position":2},"title":"Antiscience Bills Update 12\/8\/17","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"December 8, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's a quick update on the bills we're watching in the Florida legislature. The legislative session doesn't actually kick off until Jan. 8 but bills can be pre-filed in preparation for the session and those bills can be assigned to committees and possibly even heard and voted on during committee\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Controversial Theories bill 2017\/18"","block_context":{"text":"Controversial Theories bill 2017\/18","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=34"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2985,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2985","url_meta":{"origin":2951,"position":3},"title":"Another “controversial theories” bill filed and other bad news","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"November 29, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"My sincere apologies, folks. I have a laundry list of bad news to tell you about. Let's get right to it. \"Controversial Theories\" bill I've already told you about Senate Bill 966, introduced by Sen. Dennis Baxley, that proposes allowing school districts to adopt their own sets of educational standards\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Religious Liberties Act 2017"","block_context":{"text":"Religious Liberties Act 2017","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=33"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3423,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3423","url_meta":{"origin":2951,"position":4},"title":"News Roundup 2\/2\/19: Controversial Theories in Science bill","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"February 2, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"There was quite a flurry of news earlier this week about the bill filed in the state senate that would allow Florida school districts to create\/adopt their own sets of academic standards as long as they are equally or more rigorous than the state's standards. The focus of all of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3403,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3403","url_meta":{"origin":2951,"position":5},"title":"News Roundup 1\/20\/19","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 20, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"There are several items in the news of interest to us here at Florida Citizens for Science. We'll start with the budding coverage of a bill filed in our state legislature that could directly impact science education here in the Sunshine State. (See our issues page\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Controversial Theories\/Rigorous Standards\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Bills 2019\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951"}],"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=2951"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2968,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951\/revisions\/2968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}