Now the Flat Young Earthers are after not just biology courses, but Earth and Space Science.
The new Earth and Space Science (ESS) course standards (and all other science course standards) will be up for approval before the State Board of Education (SBOE) during January 21-23. Some SBOE members–the seven who are Young Earth Creationists (YECs)–will attempt to make changes to the ESS standards in ways that will damage the scientific integrity and accuracy of the course. In particular, these SBOE members will try to negatively modify or delete the standards that require students to understand the following topics that deal with scientific topics they consider controversial: age of the Earth and universe, radiometric dating, evolution of fossil life, and the origin of life by abiotic chemical processes. These topics are the ones that YECs consider to be controversial; indeed, they are obsessed with them to the exclusion of everything else.
The real problem is still that government is in charge of education. But I have the sinking feeling that a too-large number of parents, if left on their own, would feed their kids utter creationist nonsense. Kids deserve not to be crippled by their parents. But for now the battleground is in the public schools, and we’d better hope the loons don’t gain any more ground there.
Buttle's World 