Submission + - Kansas Evolution Teaching Returned
kwietman writes: "In a reversal of a 2005 policy that made Kansas the laughing stock of the nation, educational science standards have been rewritten to reflect current evolutionary theory, without language supported by proponents of intelligent design which claimed that current research challenged the scientific legitimacy of evolution. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17132925/) The new standards, the fifth revision in eight years, are free of any references to the supposed "controversy" over natural selection, and also reverses the redefinition of science to reflect only "the search for natural explanations of what is observed in the universe." The Kansas board of education has been the butt of jokes since the earlier decision, and both educator groups and science advocates loudly decried the action as political maneuvering by creationists rather than supportable science. The decision about what to teach in classrooms still rests with the 296 local school boards, but the new standards place strong guidelines on what is expected in order to comply with mandatory state testing of students. An additional action taken by the current board removes a paragraph describing abuses of science such as Nazi experimentation and the Tuskegee syphilis study, stating that these descriptions do not reflect on the teaching of the origins of life or on the discipline of science in general."
