{"id":347,"date":"2007-12-12T07:02:46","date_gmt":"2007-12-12T11:02:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=347"},"modified":"2008-08-05T20:31:14","modified_gmt":"2008-08-06T00:31:14","slug":"more-positive-evolution-opinions-is-anyone-listening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=347","title":{"rendered":"More positive evolution opinions. Is anyone listening?"},"content":{"rendered":"

An opinion column<\/a> in the Daytona Beach News-Journal points out how silly Florida looks when state leaders advocate science but then turn right around and denigrate science. Talk about a love-hate relationship!<\/p>\n

And once more the state is in a fight over evolution, creationism and its big-city cousin, “intelligent design.”<\/p>\n

Florida is in the process of approving new science standards, so expect this divide to be pronounced in 2008.<\/p>\n

The current standards don’t mention the word “evolution.” They talk about “biological changes over time.”<\/p>\n

This was a rather too-clever attempt to head off controversy. It’s not Yahooville because you can still discuss the concept generally. But it’s not Tomorrowland, because you’re talking about the central organizing concept of modern biology in a whisper, as though it were a relative who ran off with the circus.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Most legislators understand that laws mandating creationism, intelligent design, or “teaching the controversy” make our economic Tomorrowland sales pitch sound silly. And that’s bad for business.<\/p>\n

Florida already gets enough ridicule without hosting a monkey trial. I’ll be anxious to see if we’ve evolved.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A “reader views” column<\/a> in the Orlando Sentinel does a good job of highlighting how important revising the state science standards is, and how important keeping religion, yes that means intelligent design and other such “theories”, out of the science classroom.<\/p>\n

This is a long overdue and well-reasoned initiative by science education subject-matter experts to include basic training in the fundamental principles of evolution and natural selection in science textbooks and science classroom instruction. This is not an attempt by government to exclude the teaching of concepts such as intelligent design or creationism from public-school classes in religion, history, art, literature or any other humanities discipline.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An opinion column in the Daytona Beach News-Journal points out how silly Florida looks when state leaders advocate science but then turn right around and denigrate science. Talk about a love-hate relationship! And once more the state is in a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-5B","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":293,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=293","url_meta":{"origin":347,"position":0},"title":"News article about draft science standards","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"October 21, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Florida Citizens for Science president, Joe Wolf, had an excellent quote in an Orlando Sentinel story this weekend about the new draft of the state science standards. He did a great job of playing down this \"controversy\" over evolution by putting it into realistic perspective. Thanks, Joe! On the other\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In the News"","block_context":{"text":"In the News","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":378,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=378","url_meta":{"origin":347,"position":1},"title":"Miramar: the morning after","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"OK, so we got one nasty shocker out of the way last night when the Associated Press clued us in to Taylor County's anti-evolution resolution. Let's move on to see what's in store for us the day after the final public meeting about the new draft of the state science\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In the News"","block_context":{"text":"In the News","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2832,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2832","url_meta":{"origin":347,"position":2},"title":"Congratulations! Florida gets an A!","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"July 19, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"A paper in the latest edition of Evolution: Education and Outreach examines how each state's middle school science standards cover evolution (A state-by-state comparison of middle school science standards on evolution in the United States). The standards were judged in five categories:\u00c2\u00a0Is the term \u00e2\u20ac\u0153evolution\u00e2\u20ac\u009d used; Is the concept of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Our Science Standards"","block_context":{"text":"Our Science Standards","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=7"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":337,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=337","url_meta":{"origin":347,"position":3},"title":"Call to Action project","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"December 6, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Alert"","block_context":{"text":"Alert","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=6"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":295,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=295","url_meta":{"origin":347,"position":4},"title":"Go … comment … now!","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"October 21, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The new draft of the Florida science standards is up and ready for public comment. Please head over there, read through the standards and give 'em some support! You will be able to rate each benchmark and leave comments for the standards writers so that they can correct errors and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Alert"","block_context":{"text":"Alert","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=6"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":483,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=483","url_meta":{"origin":347,"position":5},"title":"Do state science standards matter?","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"February 27, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"With the fight over including evolution in the state science standards here in Florida now over the hump, we now need to ask ourselves: what did we win? As several news articles have pointed out, in many school districts across the state evolution was already being taught anyway. So, does\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Analysis\/Commentary"","block_context":{"text":"Analysis\/Commentary","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=4"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347"}],"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=347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}