Texas To Revisit Evolution Education Debate Under New Conservative Chairwoman

AUSTIN, Texas -- The Texas State Board of Education meets this week for the first time under its conservative new chairwoman appointed by Gov. Rick Perry and is expected to rekindle the debate over teaching evolution and the origin of life in public schools.

Perry, who is considering a run for president and has embraced social conservatives in Texas, named Barbara Cargill chairwoman earlier this month. Cargill, a biology teacher considered to be one of the more conservative board members, disputes the theory of evolution and voted to require that the theory's weaknesses be taught in classrooms.

An intense fight over evolution and intelligent design theory in science curriculum put a national spotlight on the 15-member elected board in 2009 when it adopted standards that encourage public schools to scrutinize "all sides" of scientific theory.

The board is now considering supplemental online instructional materials that fit under those standards and could be used as early as August when classes resume. The new materials are necessary because the state could not afford to buy new textbooks this year, leaving students to use some that are several years old.

One group, Texans for a Better Science Education, has put out a call to pack Thursday's public hearing with testimony urging board members to adopt materials that question Charles Darwin's theory on the origin of life. A vote is scheduled Friday.

Board member Thomas Ratliff suggests anti-evolution groups will find it difficult to rally votes to their side.

"The young-earth, creationist crowd lost a vote in the last election, now they are looking for two votes," he said.

The supplement materials submitted for consideration include a high school biology e-book that promotes intelligent design despite federal court rulings against teaching the theory that life on Earth is so complex that it must have come from an intelligent higher power.

Supplemental materials that are approved will have the advantage of being on the state's recommended list, but school districts can still buy other materials they chose.

Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, a group that advocates religious freedom and sides with mainstream science teachers on evolution, said she has been expecting another round of debate over evolution.

"The right-wing faction of the State Board of Education will make every effort to put their personal and political beliefs in science instruction," Miller said. "The strategy is to use junk science to undermine evolution."

The board has been known to make controversial moves. It adopted a social studies and history curriculum last year that amended or watered down the teaching of religious freedoms, the civil rights movement, America's relationship with the United Nations and hundreds of other items.

In one of the most significant changes, the board diluted the rationale for the separation of church and state in a high school government class. The ideological debate over the guidelines drew intense scrutiny beyond Texas.

Cargill was elected to the board in 2004 and is up for re-election in 2012. Her tenure is already off to a rocky start with some of her fellow Republicans after her comments earlier this month that the board has only six "true" conservative Christians. There are 11 Republicans on the board.

"Right now, there are six true conservative Christians on the board, so we have to fight for two votes. In previous years, we had to fight for one vote to get a majority," Cargill said during a July 7 meeting of the conservative group Texas Eagle Forum.

She told the Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News her comments were meant for a particular audience and "were not intended to be divisive."

Cargill, through a spokeswoman at the Texas Education Agency, declined an interview request from The Associated Press.

"It's an unfortunate start to her tenure," said board member Ratliff, who is considered one of the moderate Republicans on the board. "To continue to draw battle lines, I don't think it's moving in the right direction to restore the public's confidence in the board."

He dismissed Cargill's comments. "To be honest I could care less if she thinks I'm a conservative or a Christian," Ratliff told the AP. "I don't do either one for her."

Cargill isn't the first board leader to be involved in controversy. After the evolution debate in 2009, the Texas Senate rejected former chairman Don McLeroy's appointment amid complaints that the conservative advocated teaching creationism in public schools. The move was a rare rebuke of Perry's appointment powers.

Comments

[tweed7t]

01:37 PM on 08/08/2011

now I would be surprised....if this was happening in Massachusetts.

[anthonybrown]

12:50 AM on 08/03/2011

Creationism is a poor excuse for science. It's like those people who claim you're not human being until you are completely out of the birth canal.

You BOTH need to open a science book sometime.

[Blodo]

10:21 AM on 07/26/2011

This brings to mind a great science fiction short story called "The Marching Morons" by Cyril Kornbluth. It lays out a future scenario where those with the lowest IQs have had the highest birth rates and have overrun society. We may be witnessing another case of reality imitating art.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons

[Blodo]

10:11 AM on 07/26/2011

Oh, and she is the one to define who is a "true conservative Christian"? What monumental arrogance.

[Pollytiques]

09:40 AM on 07/25/2011

My two oldest boys went to school in Dallas. The school they went to in JUNIOR HIGH had astro turf on the ball field..at that time it cost $75,000 I read somewhere..which was bad enough...but get this part..the books were so scarce the kids had to share. Half the class got the book the first half of the school year, then they were turned in and the second group had them the next half. Too bad I was too busy just trying to feed them, keep them clothed and a roof over our heads to battle the school system...l would have lost anyway..What made me more furious than anything else was one of the books my son turned in was lost the second half..and WE had to pay for the thing..It would have been a battle I really couldn't afford and my son begged me to not say anything that he would be the one that had to pay the real price if I did. I had seen enough of how the school was run to know he was right so I went ahead and paid for the book..but it's rankled ever since..along with Astro Turf and the fact the length of hair was so much more important than the kids having an education or even enough books

[Elizabeth Schwartz]

12:16 PM on 07/24/2011

Sorry, I know this is very serious indeed... I'm just trying to stop laughing that Cargill is a biology teacher. That must be a short semester.

[Zombeaver]

11:04 PM on 07/23/2011

Homo Sapiens Sapiens can pass beyond the childhood stage of its species only after it casts off and puts to bed it's ancient mythologies. Not much separates the primitive animalistic rights of neolithic cave dwellers and the practices of the modern day true believer.

[exoticdoc2]

10:54 PM on 07/25/2011

I agree, the true believers in the religion of atheism really are very "primitive" in their belief in magic. The magic that matter can simply pop into being from nothing. The magic that massive volumes of complex, specified information can be derived from random chance. The magic that logic and reason, immaterial concepts and therefore outside of the belief system of materialism, can arise out of chaos and exist without a logical, reasonable source. The absurd beliefs of the atheist are truly quite simplistic and child-like when it comes right down to it.

[Zombeaver]

11:29 PM on 07/25/2011

Since you live in a fantasy world, magic may be the only way you are able to express the processes leading to life. But for the rest of us, science will do.

Again I say, the sum total of your argument is, "It's too complicated for me to understand, so it must be god."

But let me be more specific and let's assume for a moment that there is a creator. What makes you think he looks like a human and did it in the way a bronze-age, desert tribe described? See, your side of the argument, if it can even be called that, doesn't really want to FIND the answer, it wants to IMPOSE it.

Thanks for playing.

[Aramingo]

11:03 AM on 08/02/2011

Yes, and all of that "magic" you speak of makes amazingly accurate predictions about the nature of things. Can your imaginary friend in the sky do that?

[sakovkt]

07:44 PM on 07/23/2011

Theories are just that and NOT facts. They do "mutate" with new evidence. The calorie, for instance, as a unit of measure, came from "caloric", a theoretical 19th Century substance that transmitted heat, which was replaced by the modern concept of heat capacity. Ether similarly transmitted light in a vaccuum, until the notion of optical density came along. Quantum mechanics contains a lot of contradictions. However, all these theories were useful and productive, in their day.
Darwinism was taguht in schools as a rational for racial hygiene, and it's pretty hard for a Darwinist to argue against eugenics.

I therefore suggest that these theories be taught as exactly that: reductions of data in order to focus and clarify a particular process, usually by excluding a lot of other data.
Because understanding nature in its totality, is simply beyond us. So, we focus on a small part of it, hold all but one parameter constant, and see what effect chainging that one parameter has. Nature, obviously, doesn't work that way. See? Get it? Scientific theories are just nature for idiots. Take any theory beyond what it was intended to explain, and there is going to be trouble.

[bbriani3842]

09:50 PM on 07/23/2011

Please read a goddammed science book ...

Theories are facts ... are you going to tell me that gravity is not a fact?

Germs are not a fact?

Atoms are not a fact?

Plate Tectonics are not a fact?

General and Special Relativity are not facts?

I do, however, agree with your last sentence. It would be kinda thoopid to try and use germ theory to explain atomic theory ... duh.

[1ConservativeTexasLady]

09:49 AM on 07/25/2011

Why must you use God's name in vain? You lost all credibility (not that you really had any to begin with) in your first sentence.

[Artemis34]

02:08 PM on 07/25/2011

You said it!  Evolution is a theory... like gravity.

[Andres64]

10:04 PM on 07/23/2011

Gravity: Just a theory.

http://www.discourse.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/gravity-just-a-theory.jpg

There is also "Germ Theory" and "Atomic Theory" just to name a couple. Do you think that people saved from disease or the people in Japan say: "It's only a theory"?

[Oceras]

02:39 PM on 07/23/2011

Once again, let's pay attention to the fact that Creationism relates to the origin of things, Evolution and Intelligent design relate to what happens to things after they've been created.
I wish people would stop conflating Creationism with ID.

[UnderTheHedgeWeGo]

04:51 PM on 07/25/2011

Since according to "Creationism" everything was created in a 6 day period, Intelligent Design is part of Creationism.

[onionboy]

03:07 PM on 08/03/2011

I wish people would stop conflating intelligent design with intelligent.

[Oceras]

02:32 PM on 07/23/2011

Why couldn't the Texas school board, or any other school board for that matter, set new standards that used any theory other than evolution as an example of how to evaluate scientific methods and conclusions? The fact that, over and over again, they emphasize aspects of evolution and the Theory of Evolution itself exposes the intent to introduce religion into the classroom. They could end all controversy by doing this one simple thing. The fact that they don't advertises the fact that they don't really care about the students' education at all. With Perry as governor, who could be surprised?

[deckercat]

11:59 AM on 07/23/2011

i think i figured it out. first you under educate the populace. then deny them any birth control. reward ignorance with high posts in the regulating class. soon texas will have evolved a race of sub humans to toil uncomplainingly in the spice mines.

[Lacedaemonian]

03:15 PM on 07/23/2011

You mean like Morlocks - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morlock.

Yeah, you're definitely on to something.

[deckercat]

06:20 PM on 07/23/2011

they'll be trained to only snack on middle class eloi.

[arkady967]

08:30 AM on 07/23/2011

Discovery Center on ID in education: http://www.intelligentdesign.org/education.php
Discovery Centere on ID as theory:http://www.intelligentdesign.org/faq.php

Texas Science Education Standards:

Texas: Students must "analyze, evaluate and critique scientific explanations . . . including examining all sides of scientific evidence of those scientific explanations so as to encourage critical thinking," and also "analyze and evaluate" core evolutionary claims, including "common ancestry," "natural selection," "mutation," "sudden appearance," the origin of the "complexity of the cell," and the formation of "long complex molecules having information such as the DNA molecule for self-replicating life."
Minnesota: "The student will be able to explain how scientific and technological innovations as well as new evidence can challenge portions of or entire accepted theories and models including . . . [the] theory of evolution . . . ."

[Chester Erickson]

12:45 PM on 07/23/2011

I'm assuming you are well-versed enough in evolution to be able to discuss it.

If not, this is a wonderful video lecture series that will get you up to speed:

http://academicearth.org/courses/evolution-ecology-and-behavior

It takes a while to watch all the videos, but will explain why the human eye is clearly not "well-designed" and covers a good portion of our understanding of how it works.

[arkady967]

01:16 PM on 07/23/2011

Looks like a lot of interesting stuff to look at - thanks for the recommendation....

Regarding "bad design" and eyes there are things to consider: (http://www.detectingdesign.com/humaneye.html). Aside from that - bad design wouldn't be an argument against design (remember Ford's Pinto) it would be a tentative argument that a perfect being couldn't be responsible for the design - in the case of theology, what's called a theodicy, which was part of Darwins contention.

And, again, and again, and again, the Texas science standards aren't advocating ID, though people seem to want to default to the position that they are... I'm not sure why, save, perhaps the standards are being viewed as a steath means of getting ID in the door...But, if so, what's to fear? Surival is to the most fit...perhaps the same applies to ideas (competiton may be good for evolution -it's good for ID, this is sure....)

[Oceras]

02:14 PM on 07/23/2011

Theories are facts. Facts don't mutate (pardon the pun) based on new evidence. Throwing in aspects of evolutionary theory as well as the theory itself exposes to full view the religious bent of these standards. Were that not the case, the standards could have (still could) chosen to evaluate any theory that has not been challenged by religious groups on a religious basis.
The people who write these standards are not smart enough and knowledgeable enough to be writing such standards.

[Chester Erickson]

09:19 PM on 07/22/2011

If we are going to teach creationism in school as a viable alternative to evolution, I would like to suggest the following stories be taught:

The gods Tepeu and Gucumatz were sitting around one day and decided to think the earth into existence. After many trials involving wood and clay people, they finally got some animals to help them build humans.

Pan Gu hatched from an egg that transformed into the earth and sky. He grew really fast, and that separated the two. When he died, his body parts became different things. The lice he had became human.

The raven made the earth. The first three people showed up in a house. Then the kid broke something and made light, but the dad took it away from him and that's why we have day and night.

Or we could go with something general:

At first there was chaos or nothing at all, nobody is sure which. Something happened, which might have been accidental or was intended by some god or another, it could've been any one of hundreds. People were formed from some material, or they crawled out of a cave, or they were sent down from heaven. Animals may or may not have been involved in the process, even the mythical kind like dragons, it's just too hard to say for sure.

All of these options are just as viable as intelligent design.

[emp122]

01:31 AM on 07/23/2011

You just don't get it, do you? When they say "Freedom of Religion", what they (conservative Repubs) really mean is freedom to practice Christianity, not anything else : )

[Chester Erickson]

12:36 PM on 07/23/2011

You're right, I don't get it.

Christians are hurting themselves when they try to force religion into everything because it's a slippery slope.

They complain about Islamic countries because theocracy bars them from building churches in places like Iran, then try to turn our country into one.

Let's pretend that they succeed: What flavor of Christianity will be the official religion of the U.S.? Catholicism? Baptist? Lutheran? How are they going to feel when their religion is the one that falls out of favor and the oppression starts?

[arkady967]

08:34 AM on 07/23/2011

"Honest critics of intelligent design acknowledge the difference between intelligent design and creationism. University of Wisconsin historian of science Ronald Numbers is critical of intelligent design, yet according to the Associated Press, he "agrees the creationist label is inaccurate when it comes to the ID [intelligent design] movement." Why, then, do some Darwinists keep trying to conflate intelligent design with creationism? According to Dr. Numbers, it is because they think such claims are "the easiest way to discredit intelligent design." In other words, the charge that intelligent design is "creationism" is a rhetorical strategy on the part of Darwinists who wish to delegitimize design theory without actually addressing the merits of its case."

http://www.intelligentdesign.org/faq.php
http://www.discovery.org/a/3209

[Angel1999]

09:03 AM on 07/23/2011

The Wedge Strategy shows the actual motivation of the Discovery Institute and Intelligent Design. They have little interest in science, merely in trying to overthrow "Darwinism". At it's core, Intelligent Design is interested in demonstrating that materialism is bad, not in proving that Intelligent Design is a valid theory.

http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html

[Chester Erickson]

12:27 PM on 07/23/2011

So we can teach that intelligent design might mean that a couple of gods were sitting around talking about things, and as they imagined them, the things started popping into existence?

Presumably, if we're going with the belief that some intelligent agent created features of the universe, what that intelligent agent might be is going to come up in the conversation.

In the interest of fairness and freedom of religion, if we are going to teach non-Christian children that it might have been the Judeo-Christian god that created the universe, then we should teach Christian children that it might have been Ra, Pan Gu, Enlil and Enki, or any of the other intelligent gods of human history.

If Christians are being honest about the reason for teaching intelligent design, they shouldn't have a problem with their children learning about all the other possibilities and gods.

[ZZPOT]

06:45 PM on 07/22/2011

Oh dear! And she's a biology teacher. Her under graduate degree was from Baylor, a very Xtian University. She even went to a Xtian high school in Memphis TN. I watched a video of her on Youtube, trying to read something from a book. She did it like my Mom when she tried to read the bible. Just reading words, no comprehension. This woman is really ignorant. Big surprise.

[JS3]

06:21 PM on 07/22/2011

I would describe myself as being "spiritual" even a "religious" person, and that is precisely why I have less and less answers and certitudes about anything. "Religious" people who have it all figured out for themselves and others, who pass judgment, condemn, feel that they have mastery over all subjects (including scientific data, among others), and lord over others their "sovererignty and superiority" are opininated bullies and tyrants and NOT "spiritual beings." The more I strive to develop my spirituality the less I find myself passing judgement and condemning others and pushing any religious ideology onto any other human. Please, please keep "religion" out of civic life, schools and governments...it's the only sane thing to do.

[Pollytiques]

09:48 AM on 07/25/2011

I can have some respect for you. But for the hypocritical "christians" we see so much of now..nope...NONE. And I went to church constantly until I was grown, finally realized the "good christians" were all talk and not much action..throw some crumbs to the needy a couple of times and use one or two half good deeds as bragging rights for years. I lost my faith in human nature, but I still believe in God. I just have to do it in private because I am too outspoken..first time I saw a big fat nasty hypocrite spouting off about something stupid I couldn't keep quiet now.

The politicans that claim they have a calling or God talks to them or they somehow have a pipeline directly to heaven and God is telling them to declare war on innocent people..that is NOT the God I learned about in my church. But it may be the one that the people that makes most of the money because of wars know...but they don't worship God..they worship money and power.

[JS3]

12:59 PM on 07/25/2011

Thank you for sharing your journey and experiences, Pollytiques. And, thanks for giving me some respect. I totally respect you and I hear you. And, yes, talk and promises and dogma is often so cheap and get SO old! If we are not transformed beings and act accordingly, there will be no change or right action ever possible in the world. To the politicians, and the "religious" and the "moral and righteous" and the "revolutionaries" I say, show me your actions!...How are you accting and walking every day? Namaste.