{"id":3264,"date":"2018-04-07T15:59:46","date_gmt":"2018-04-07T19:59:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3264"},"modified":"2018-04-07T15:59:46","modified_gmt":"2018-04-07T19:59:46","slug":"textbooks-are-still-a-hot-topic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3264","title":{"rendered":"Textbooks are still a hot topic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Somehow we here in Florida made it through the past few months without being too embarrassed by the anti-science nuts in our state government. A handful of worrying bills that would have impacted science education died at the end of the annual legislative session (see here<\/a> and here<\/a>). Proposals made by the Constitution Revision Commission that would have opened the floodgates to even more public money flowing to private religious schools that blatantly teach creationism also lost steam (see here<\/a>). And many school districts approved new science textbooks lately without too much controversy (see here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

With all of that good news to bask in, it’s tempting to sit back and relax. But the creationists and climate change deniers certainly aren’t taking time off, so we can’t either.<\/p>\n

The folks behind most of the above trouble making, the Florida Citizens’ Alliance, have been very busy lately. They partnered with an organization out of Texas called Truth in Textbooks to offer training to any of the Alliance’s supporters in how to review textbooks<\/a> — from their unique viewpoint, of course.<\/p>\n

Florida Citizens\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Alliance is teaming up with Truth in Textbooks (TNT) to train everyday folks like you and me to critically, without bias, assess the instructional materials used in our classrooms. Their focus is on social studies and religious indoctrination, but the TNT process and template will work for English language arts, math, and science as well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Their latest training kicked off this month. Even though they focus heavily on social studies, keep in mind that we here at Florida Citizens for Science first learned of the Alliance’s creationism several years ago from their negative reviews of world history books that mention the evolution of man. And their network is growing as The Alliance and Truth in Textbooks<\/a> recently welcomed The Report Card<\/a> to their team.\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u0153’The Report Card’ founded by Bill Korach in 2011 has the express goal of ‘restoring truth to education’.”<\/p>\n

If you visit the deep rabbit holes of these organizations’ websites and social media, it’s tempting to write them off as fringe nutcases. But the reality is that they’ve gotten very good at making a name for themselves and making friends in local and state government. They must be taken seriously.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>With that in mind, we here at Florida Citizens for Science have joined a network of like-minded folks, too. Florida Education Defenders<\/a> consists of:<\/p>\n

National Coalition Against Censorship<\/a>
\nFlorida Citizens for Science<\/a>
\nFlorida Conference of Historians<\/a>
\nFlorida Education Association<\/a>
\nAmerican Library Association<\/a>
\nAuthors Guild<\/a>
\nComic Book Legal Defense Fund<\/a>
\nNational Council of Teachers of English<\/a>
\nPEN America<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s an announcement about Florida Education Defenders from the\u00c2\u00a0National Council of Teachers of English<\/a>. And here’s an announcement from the\u00c2\u00a0Comic Book Legal Defense Fund<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Earlier in this post I mentioned that many school boards have approved the purchase of new science textbooks without much fuss. However, state law mandates that once a school board approves textbooks, citizens then have 30 days to register a formal complaint. So, we’re not out of the woods yet, especially with the Alliance and their partners still fired up.<\/p>\n

Now is not the time to rest. Now is the time to defend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Somehow we here in Florida made it through the past few months without being too embarrassed by the anti-science nuts in our state government. A handful of worrying bills that would have impacted science education died at the end of … 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":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-QE","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3280,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3280","url_meta":{"origin":3264,"position":0},"title":"Collier County: science textbooks promote “utter nonsense”","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"May 17, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Some media outlets are now reporting on the kerfuffle the Florida Citizens' Alliance is causing over science textbooks under consideration for purchase by the Collier County school board. The most important report is the Tampa Bay Times' Gradebook Blog podcast:\u00c2\u00a0Inside the debate over Florida textbooks. It's well worth your time\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Textbooks"","block_context":{"text":"Textbooks","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=26"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/christian-ed.gif?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2690,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2690","url_meta":{"origin":3264,"position":1},"title":"\u00e2\u20ac\u0153How could this go sideways?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"April 18, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Thursday is probably our last realistic chance to put the brakes on, or at least challenge, the creationist and climate change denier's dream bill: Instructional Materials bills SB 1210 and HB 989. (See our long list of blog posts on these bills in the Instructional Materials bill '17 category.) The\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":3250,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3250","url_meta":{"origin":3264,"position":2},"title":"Citrus County citizens: don’t tiptoe around “controversial” topics","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"March 15, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been very busy tracking down results of science textbook adoption public hearings and school board votes. I'm discouraged by how many school district websites are absolutely useless in this regard. I would think that posting public notices about instructional materials adoptions on official websites would be the first thing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Textbooks"","block_context":{"text":"Textbooks","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=26"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3312,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3312","url_meta":{"origin":3264,"position":3},"title":"Road trip to Collier County: Speaking up for science education","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"June 17, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I'll be on the road tomorrow morning (Monday) headed to Naples on a mission to help speak up for science education. I hope to see some of you folks there so we can finally meet in person. Why do science defenders need to converge on Collier County? Because a coordinated\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 2 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3312#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3270,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=3270","url_meta":{"origin":3264,"position":4},"title":"Collier County science textbook objections: “You profess to be a Christian”","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"May 9, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Science textbooks are still an issue here in Florida. Many school districts are working their way through the lengthy process of reviewing and adopting new science books for their classrooms. And there are still a few hot spots of controversy that we need to keep an eye on. For instance:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Textbooks"","block_context":{"text":"Textbooks","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=26"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2124,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2124","url_meta":{"origin":3264,"position":5},"title":"Last day of legislative session","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"May 2, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The fight in the state legislature over a voucher program expansion attempt might spill over into today, the last day of the session. Florida Citizens for Science believes that expansion of the program is a bad idea without a requirement to hold voucher-accepting private schools accountable for what they teach,\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2124#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3264"}],"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=3264"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3267,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3264\/revisions\/3267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}