Turkey’s Minister of Education is reportedly advocating incorporation of Intelligent Design Theory into that country’s biology textbooks. This follows reports of advocacy for Intelligent Design by right-wing political groups in Poland.
Monthly Archives: October 2006
ID @ UD
October 31, 2006 – 9:16 pm
Evolution goes toe-to-toe with intelligent design
Professors speak as part of three-day Science vs. Science program
Wallace McKelvey
Event at the University of Delaware, October 25, 2006, reported in the University of Delaware’s independent student newspaper.
Levine, Mathews on teacher ed programs
October 31, 2006 – 7:46 pm
Jay Mathews’ column for The Washington Post reports various responses to Art Levine’s analysis, which is summarized in his opinion piece published today (both 10/31 columns linked here). It would be a mistake to cast Levine as an enemy of university-based teacher education.
Mis-citation in ID post
October 28, 2006 – 12:22 pm
Contrary to Robert Crowther’s mis-citation, the article he quotes by Philip Skell is in The Scientist–not The New Scientist. They are not the same.
correction for Poynter “White Paper”
October 26, 2006 – 6:29 pm
The White Paper refers to the “Santorum Amendment” to NCLB, which was cut from the legislation before NCLB was passed by Congress and signed into law. Despite representations by ID advocates NCLB actually does not mandate or “encourage” “teaching the controversy,” this is not part of the law.
Distinctive value of the Poynter paper on Intelligent Design
October 24, 2006 – 10:48 am
The Poynter Center’s White Paper makes a number of other arguments that are being made by others, but I think this framing of the conflict over Intelligent Design in terms of civic education is the special and unique contribution from this paper.
A Rawlsian argument against ID in public schools
October 22, 2006 – 7:32 pm
The White Paper extols the virtues of making and being open to public arguments on non-doctrinaire grounds, subject to the evidence. That’s exactly what ID proponents say that they are doing. Analysis that presupposes this not to be the case, rather than addressing those who believe this is the case with ID, does not clarify the central problem for those who do not already understand.
Teacher Arrested in New York
October 22, 2006 – 6:33 pm
President Bush said, “If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes.”
Good use for Impenetrable Textbooks
October 22, 2006 – 3:27 pm
A candidate for Oklahoma state superintendent of education has come up with a way to put those massively impenetrable textbooks to good use: If students can use them to protect themselves from gunfire in the schools, school safety can be improved without using more taxpayer money.
What is curriculum?
October 22, 2006 – 2:28 am
Is this the right way to identify what it is that we are trying to understand, through the alternative (but maybe complementary, rather than alternative) ways of looking at curriculum? In any case, I think the questions of how best to understand, and what it is we seek to understand, do need to be recognized as different questions.
The First Year Grad Student’s Dictionary of Educational Terms
October 21, 2006 – 7:16 pm
Here is the current version of an online dictionary for first-year graduate students in education. It is developing continuously, since it is maintained on a wiki page that anyone can join in and make additions, revisions, or whatever.
ID Creationism in schools - the “Rawlsian” argument
October 19, 2006 – 10:40 pm
Reuland is correct to say that these people are not liberals, and can’t be heard to use Rawls’ theory as their own; but what they’re trying to argue is that liberals don’t have any possible position from which to justify not teaching ID, since they undermine their own principles, and the logical basis for any liberal argument, if ID is not included.
“Researcher” says humans to evolve into 2 subspecies
October 19, 2006 – 12:49 am
This story has circulated globally today. Jay Leno used it in his monologue tonight (October 18), although he did not mention the “2 subspecies” idea.
You can expect the anti-evolution folks to attack this as an example of evolutionary science.
I don’t have time to write a proper article now. I may expand this later; but I [...]
more on “OK to teach ID” in Michigan
October 19, 2006 – 12:47 am
Press reports are still interpreting the Michigan decision like this, “The State Board of Education decided on Tuesday, Oct. 10 that Intelligent Design can be taught in a public school classroom, but the board also sent a strong message in support of teaching the Theory of Evolution.”
TX GOP to ban use of Economics Standards?
October 16, 2006 – 7:26 am
The 2006 Platform of the Texas State Republican Party declares that “We support the objective teaching and equal treatment of scientific strengths and weaknesses of scientific theories, including Intelligent Design. We believe theories of life origins and environmental theories should be taught as scientific theory not scientific law; that social studies and other curriculum should not be based on any one theory.”
Sunstein & “social knowledge”
October 14, 2006 – 2:59 pm
In the future I will be writing more about the crucial difference between these two senses of “information.” They are such different ideas that I need to adopt different ways of signifying them. For now, I’m thinking of differentially using “in-formation” juxtaposed with “info-mation.” It seems to me that this could work. What do you think?
Wikipedia founder: “Free the curriculum!”
October 14, 2006 – 11:35 am
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia project, issues a call to “Free the Curriculum.”
