Evolution again?

After the bruising battle over the new state science standards ended in February, everybody thought the new standards were good to go until 2014. But are they? Maybe not, according to some overlooked wording in one of last spring's major education bills and the opinion of a key legislative staffer.

SB 1908 requires the state Board of Education to adopt top-notch Next Generation academic standards by the end of 2011. And that apparently includes another set of science standards, because the BOE adopted the latest standards a few months before the bill passed and was signed into law by Gov. Charlie Crist.

The Department of Education recently asked an attorney with the Legislature's joint Administrative Procedures Committee for his opinion. And the lawyer, Brian Moore, said the law seems to be clear. "I think they have to adopt everything again," he told the Gradebook this morning.

Does that mean the DOE has to undertake another full-blown, monthslong review of the standards? That's not clear. But SB 1908 says the education commission must submit proposed Next Generation standards to teachers, experts and others for "review and comment." Then they go to the governor, the Senate president and the House speaker at least 21 days before the BOE considers adoption.

For what it's worth, the Joint Administrative Procedures Committee includes Rep. D. Alan Hays, R-Umatilla, the lead House sponsor of the "academic freedom" bill pushed by Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Brandon. Moore said neither Hays nor any other committee members had any input into his opinion. But he also said members would be consulted if DOE ignored it.

SB 1908 says the Board of Education must adopt a review and readoption schedule for Next Generation standards by Dec. 31, 2008. The board next meets Dec. 2 in Orlando.

A DOE spokesperson told the Gradebook last week that it was not clear when, before 2011, the science standards would be revisited, or how intensely they'd be reviewed. "They're going to take a look and see if there's anything new in the science world that they need to put in," the spokesperson said.

It's worth noting that the board vote in February was 4-3. And every single board member will be up for reappointment by 2011.

Needless to say, supporters of the new science standards are wondering what, exactly, is going on. For a summary of their concerns, and a good synopsis of the technical background behind all this, see this Florida Citizens for Science blog post here.

Ron Matus, state education reporter

*

Comments

[MenckenJr]

Bill C:

Don't hold your breath.

[Bill C]

"If you trolls don't consider me to be a serious threat, then prove it by stopping your efforts to sabotage my blog by posting garbage on it."

Nobody is trying to sabotage your blog. At worst they look at it as a source of schadenfreude. You are doing the most to sabotage your blog.

Your header says:

"My biggest motivation for creating my own blogs was to avoid the arbitrary censorship practiced by other blogs and various other Internet forums. Censorship will be avoided in my blogs"

Yet you arbitrary censor. Even your "Association of Non-Censoring Bloggers" blog is censored.

"no holding up of comments for moderation"

Yet you hold up all comments for moderation.

"Comments containing nothing but insults and/or ad hominem (sic) attacks are discouraged."

Yet you are the number one practitioner of such attacks!

If you really want to be taken seriously, you will have to support, rather than just repeat, your positions. You can't be afraid of comments that disagree with your position. You must occasionally at least, answer a question with something other than an insult, and when you are unable to support your position (as is usually the case), don't make yourself look like even more of a fool by claiming victory.

Calling people silly names like "Judge Jackass Jones", "Meanie Eugenie" or "Fathead Ed" does not make them look foolish but it does make you look infantile. Your blog is not known as "Larry's Cry Room" without a reason.

We all know who is making your blog such a laughing stock, you can find him in the mirror. If you want to be taken seriously, you will have to earn it.

[Drew Smith]

I've never posted on your blog, Larry. Guess I just proved that I don't consider you a serious threat to anyone. Now, when do you plan to address the questions you were asked? Bueller? Bueller?

[Larry Fafarman]

If you trolls don't consider me to be a serious threat, then prove it by stopping your efforts to sabotage my blog by posting garbage on it.

[Bill C]

"The trolls see me as a serious threat to their dogma -- that is why they keep attacking me and my blog"

Larry has no valid complaint. After bending over with a "kick me" sign pinned to his back, he goes sailing between the goal posts while announcing that he has won yet another one.

He hands us the meringue pies and then, with their contents dripping off of his face, he proclaims "they didn't lay a finger on me."

[MenckenJr]

Larry isn't a threat to anyone's "dogma". He *is*, however, a legend in his own mind.

[Hector]

Larry is not irrelevant. His hypocrisy and fear of opposing ideas do a great deal to discredit the creationists.

Many think that he is actually an evolution supporter who just pretends to be a creationist while intentionally losing every argument and generally acting like an idiot.

[Drew Smith]

How is someone who fails to address the questions asked a "serious threat"? When you keep dodging the questions, you fail to be taken seriously.

[FSM]

Larry

You're irrelevant.

[Larry Fafarman]

The trolls see me as a serious threat to their dogma -- that is why they keep attacking me and my blog.

--"Im always kicking their butts -- that's why they don't like me."--

-- Gov. Arnold Schwarenegger

[Voice in the Wilderness]

Larry's normal method of debate is to state something without backup, usually misinterpreting concepts and redefining common words. He then ignores all rebuttals, calling everyone replying "Dunghill". Next he restates his original position verbatim while claiming no one has supported their arguments against him.

He has called himself an "unrecognized legal genius" while every case he has filed was laughed out of court at the first appearance. (This is public record.)

He calls himself an "Engineer", yet he often demonstrates a total lack of understanding of basic scientific concepts.

He posts book reviews on Amazon and other sites for books that he admits he has never read.

He has joined into astronomy blogs claiming that meteors must come from inside the atmosphere, a position that he has since abandoned.

He has attacked Wikipedia for not including a book on its list of banned books for no other reason than the fact that the book in question had not been banned. After losing all arguments, he called for an "edit war" on Wikipedia. He seemed surprised when they blocked him.

When he is blocked, he then tries to come back as a sock puppet. These attempts are easily detected due to his characteristic ranting. He claims that his "brilliance" and "flawless arguments" are what is detected.

This is not just to pile on Larry. It is in the vain hope that he might recognize some of his problems, or at least practice what he preaches. He now observes none of the rules he has stated in the headers for starting his blogs.

Perhaps the first move would be for him to stop censoring his "Association of Non-Censoring Bloggers" site?

[Drew Smith]

MenckenJr, I'm well aware of what Larry is. But I like to keep prodding him to prove it over and over again. That makes it a "well-supported" assertion.

[MenckenJr]

As to *why* Larry is a crank, go dig through his posts. Once you get through the defensiveness and basement-inventor-wannabe verbiage you'll notice that he's not much better than your garden-variety creationist who (a) starts out not really understanding evolution, (b) follows that by picking one or two isolated as-yet-unanswered questions and putting his own spin on them, (c) follows *that* by repeating things without explaining them and (d) finishes by claiming that evolution isn't a fact because it can't explain something the way he's misrepresented it.

[MenckenJr]

Drew, Larry is a crank. Ignore him.

[Larry Fafarman]

What is the matter with you lousy trolls? Your quarrels with me have no business being on this blog.

Voice in the Wilderness barfs,
--Larry claims that it is necessary to give both sides in an argument and yet the blog to which he refers, his "I'm From Missouri" blog, is heavily censored while he rants about alleged and unproven censorship on other blogs.--

The reason why I am censoring comments, dunghill, is that my blog has been cluttered up by the following kind of breathtakingly inane comment with no redeeming social value:

--
" I tried to follow the instructions and they did not work. Per the instructions, I saved the comment form to my hard-drive ( I could save it only as a PDF file ), filled it in, and then tried to email the filled-in form as an attachment but could not -- I could email the comment form only as an empty form."

The instructions work. Anyone who knows anything about computers can see what the dullard did wrong.

Thank you for helping us in two ways:

1. You gave us the address to make comments on the need to teach science, not superstition, in science classes.

2. The incoherence of your own comments will strengthen our case.

3. I found a way around your blocking of me. Even you should be able to figure out how to solve that.
--

You lousy trolls feel greatly threatened by my blog so you try to sabotage it by cluttering up with garbage like that.

[Hector]

It has gone even farther. Larry is now moderating and censoring comments on his "Association of Non-Censoring Bloggers" blog. Is there anyone who takes this clown serisously?

[Voice in the Wilderness]

Larry claims that it is necessary to give both sides in an argument and yet the blog to which he refers, his "I'm From Missouri" blog, is heavily censored while he rants about alleged and unproven censorship on other blogs.

"Physician heal thyself"

[Larry Fafarman]

Definition of "process server": Someone who serves process on a state board of education in a lawsuit charging that the state science standards call evolution a "theory" without noting that the scientific meaning of the word "theory" is different from the everyday meaning of the word.

[Drew Smith]

Presenting a scientific theory in a science class is not "ramming" it down anyone's throat. Students should learn the best available scientific theories that are capable of explaining what we observe. In the case of evolution, what "alternative" *scientific* theory is on sufficient par that it should be presented to students as well?

How is evolution from radioactive platypuses "plausible"? What evidence is there for it?

[Drew Smith]

Why shouldn't science standards define terms *as they are used in science*? That's not "confusing". That's *logical*.

Students *need* to learn that words commonly used in ordinary language may take on specialized and/or different meanings in various knowledge disciplines. They need to learn what those words are and what they mean. Otherwise, they won't understand material written within those disciplines.

[Stabby McTwist]

If they teach evolution, then they might as well teach that we evolved from radioactive platypuses too. It's totally plausible.

[Balls Mcgee]

No. If you teach evolution, then you need to teach creation. If your gonna ram a THEORY down kids' throats, then at least give them an alternative idea so they can make up their mind.

[Larry Fafarman]

--Larry, those 13% were wrong. The biology course you get if you don't mention evolution is a disconnected skeleton that's hard for students to digest; the theory is what makes the observations make sense. --

Wrong -- there are lots of areas of biology where evolution is irrelevant. I would not go so far as to say, though, that an "excellent" course in biology that does not mention Darwin or evolution theory could exist.

[MenckenJr]

Larry, those 13% were wrong. The biology course you get if you don't mention evolution is a disconnected skeleton that's hard for students to digest; the theory is what makes the observations make sense.

[oh gee whiz]

Yee freakin' haw. Let's all be a bunch of mindless drones and live blindly by faith!

[pirate]

I guess I'd better dust off my FSM curriculum.

[Larry Fafarman]

If the Florida science standards need to be revisited before the end of 2011, that's good. The following errors need to be eliminated:

(1) -- the statement that evolution is the "fundamental concept underlying all of biology." How can that be true when 13% of respondents in a recent national survey of science teachers agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that an "excellent" biology course could exist that does not mention Darwin or evolution theory at all? See --

http://im-from-missouri.blogspot.com/2008/08/state-of-evolution-education-in-usa-and.html

(2) -- defining "scientific theories" as being "well-supported" and "widely accepted" by definition. For one thing, that definition is incorrect -- there are strong scientific theories and weak scientific theories. Also, state science standards should not define terms -- defining terms should be left to standard dictionaries. Giving non-standard definitions of terms creates confusion.

You can neither prove or disprove the existence of God! It is a matter of FAITH! If you read the creation story of Genesis you can infer a type of Evolution, "And God created...each after it's own kind." So God created a dog and you have hundreds of different kinds of dogs, cats, cattle, birds, people... sounds like evolution to me!

[MenckenJr]

Um... Balls? This country wasn't founded on the idea of Jesus or any other religion. The Founding Fathers went to great lengths to make sure that religion had to sing for its supper and not just depend on the power of government to extort money for its upkeep.

The thing that tickles me the most about these "intelligent design" folks is that they don't want to take the risk of subjecting their latest "proof of God" to a real scientific test because that opens it up to disproof. But they want to use the ballot box to force it into science class when it hasn't earned its way in at all.

Balls is 100% right. The mission to the moon was filmed in Hollywood. The world is flat. Dinasaurs never existed. Science is the devil's candy. Knowledge is evil. So, empty your mind of everything you think you know . . . like Balls.

[Balls Mcgee]

Anyone who believes in this evolution bullsh*t is against America. This country was founded on the idea of Jesus.

[MenckenJr]

Oh, no. Not these ID idiots again.

What a World Class Waste of Time and Money . . . wasn't that part of Rubio's 100 ideas to destroy the state of Florida?