{"id":358,"date":"2007-12-20T07:02:30","date_gmt":"2007-12-20T11:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=358"},"modified":"2008-08-05T20:25:49","modified_gmt":"2008-08-06T00:25:49","slug":"heres-why-you-need-to-get-involved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=358","title":{"rendered":"Here’s why you need to get involved"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recap: Florida’s public school science standards from 1996 are being completely revamped. The current standards don’t mention evolution, but the new draft standards do so prominently. This has stirred up the anti-evolution crowd, including several education system decision-makers. The real story here is that the science standards overall have been dramatically improved. Unfortunately, the anti-science folks are turning the spotlight off of this improvement and onto the heartburn they have over evolution. Here is a list of decision-makers and other influential people<\/a> who have gone on record as being in favor of including “other theories,” mainly\u00c2\u00a0the creationist Trojan horse intelligent design,\u00c2\u00a0alongside evolution.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, I posted about a story<\/a> in the Florida Baptist Witness that is rallying the troops to shoot down established science. I had said that there was little new information in that story. I was wrong. Mike O’Risal pointed out on his blog<\/a> that there is something very interesting\u00c2\u00a0at the tail end of that story:<\/p>\n

\n

Kemple distributed to SBOE members a letter and legal memorandum by attorney David Gibbs and curriculum expert Francis Grubbs critiquing the science standards.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We are concerned about the scientific accuracy of the Florida standards and also about the potential some of these proposed terms might have for requiring only one particular belief system in Florida classrooms, which would be an unconstitutional violation of the Establishment Clause,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d write Gibbs and Grubbs.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

David Gibbs had made a name for himself before. Here’s what O’Risal clues us in to:<\/p>\n

\n

It turns out that David Gibbs, the same David Gibbs who helped get right-wing congressmen to call an emergency session in the middle of the night to stop Terri Schiavo being put to rest, and the same David Gibbs who is currently representing Nathaniel Abraham, the Woods Hole Creationist, has also managed to find himself a place in the spotlight as a leader in the effort by Creationists in Florida to insert religious indoctrination into science classes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Here’s a bit more about Gibbs’ involvement<\/a> in the Schiavo case. And here’s information about Gibbs’ involvement<\/a> in the Nathaniel Abraham case.<\/p>\n

Reader, I hope\u00c2\u00a0you are not on the sidelines just watching what is happening to Florida’s science education. Get involved<\/a>. Now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recap: Florida’s public school science standards from 1996 are being completely revamped. The current standards don’t mention evolution, but the new draft standards do so prominently. This has stirred up the anti-evolution crowd, including several education system decision-makers. The real … 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":[6,7],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-5M","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":300,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=300","url_meta":{"origin":358,"position":0},"title":"Article on science standards\/evolution in The Ledger","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"October 24, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The Ledger ran an article today about the new draft science standards and predictably focused entirely on the inclusion of evolution. As I've mentioned before, I think that is irresponsible and sensationalist. I understand that evolution garners high interest, but the real story is that the standards are being improved\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":[]},{"id":338,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=338","url_meta":{"origin":358,"position":1},"title":"Miami Herald article","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"December 8, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The Miami Herald jumps into the fray over evolution in the Florida public schools science standards. The reporter writes a comprehensive piece on what is going on, the history of attacks on evolution education, and interviews quite a few people to try to display everyone's views on the subject. In\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":483,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=483","url_meta":{"origin":358,"position":2},"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":[]},{"id":372,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=372","url_meta":{"origin":358,"position":3},"title":"And yet another school board member …","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 7, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I was featured in an article in the Daytona Beach News-Journal today. I think the paper made too big a deal out of connecting my day job with my volunteer efforts here. However, in the newspaper world, the mantra is to localize whenever possible. Essentially, I am their local story\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":379,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=379","url_meta":{"origin":358,"position":4},"title":"Breathtaking inanity","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm embarrassed. Sure, the Taylor County school board was apparently the first to pass a resolution complaining about evolution (previous post here), but they're not the only one. Two more counties passed resolutions, too: Baker County and Holmes County. The Baker County board meeting minutes from Dec. 17 say on\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":353,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=353","url_meta":{"origin":358,"position":5},"title":"More about Pinellas mess","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"December 18, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday, the St. Petersburg Times teased in their education blog today's story about the Pinellas County school board's creationist majority. The board members are confused. They worry that students will have a tough time meshing the scientific theory of evolution with their personal and family religious beliefs. And it would\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":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358"}],"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=358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}