And yet the "teach the controversy" approach is the most successful dishonest ploy used by the ID creationists. If they can persuade an ignorant reporter or columnist that there is a great controversy among scientists, they may see their names appear in print alongside those of serious scientists. That's all they really want. There is no scientific debate to win or lose, only a sociopolitical debate about whether science or religious claptrap is taught in our public school science classrooms.
Get me started someday on my late father's role... he was a secondary school science teacher... on the state textbook committee. These people do not care if they look like idiots, only if their names are spelled correctly in columns and on TV. There is no level to which they will not stoop for publicity.
Blessings upon your dad. Anyone who can withstand the hormonal soup that is secondary school has a spine of steel. And a science teacher as well! I hope he didn't get too much guff from the fundies....
Thanks, ellroon. My Dad, William Bates, who had a liberal soul to the core, put up with all necessary crap, and no unnecessary crap, from the youngsters with raging hormones; he just saw that as part of the job. He faced the kids with better spirit and more humor than I could ever have managed. FWIW, he regularly won awards for his teaching, and his graduating students occasionally went on, after college, to careers in science.
As for Dad's advocacy and service on the science textbook committee, he successfully faced down the Gablers... the predecessors in Texas of our current crew of religious science-deniers... and had a direct positive impact on the quality of science textbooks nationwide, because Texas is, like California, a sufficiently large market that all publishers accommodate it. To this day, I am proud of him, and proud to be his son.
What a wonderful testimonial to your Dad, Steve. He sounds like the kind of teacher kids would come back to visit when they are grown.
I am surrounded by teachers, administrators, scientists, mathematicians et al in my family. So I am impressed he got on the science textbook committee, that's a 'walking on eggs' type of job and highly political. You have to be tough!
I'm going to go Google the Gablers and find out more about this eternal war on science I'm so unaware of... (do I really have to say 'of which I am unaware?...)
Right now I'm reading Galileo's Daughter which is about Galileo's trial with the Vatican. While being a religious man, he could not fathom why religion would resist what science would uncover. He felt it was honoring God to understand His creation.
Yet, in this day and age, here we are again...isn't it bizarre?
4 comments:
And yet the "teach the controversy" approach is the most successful dishonest ploy used by the ID creationists. If they can persuade an ignorant reporter or columnist that there is a great controversy among scientists, they may see their names appear in print alongside those of serious scientists. That's all they really want. There is no scientific debate to win or lose, only a sociopolitical debate about whether science or religious claptrap is taught in our public school science classrooms.
Get me started someday on my late father's role... he was a secondary school science teacher... on the state textbook committee. These people do not care if they look like idiots, only if their names are spelled correctly in columns and on TV. There is no level to which they will not stoop for publicity.
Blessings upon your dad. Anyone who can withstand the hormonal soup that is secondary school has a spine of steel. And a science teacher as well! I hope he didn't get too much guff from the fundies....
Thanks, ellroon. My Dad, William Bates, who had a liberal soul to the core, put up with all necessary crap, and no unnecessary crap, from the youngsters with raging hormones; he just saw that as part of the job. He faced the kids with better spirit and more humor than I could ever have managed. FWIW, he regularly won awards for his teaching, and his graduating students occasionally went on, after college, to careers in science.
As for Dad's advocacy and service on the science textbook committee, he successfully faced down the Gablers... the predecessors in Texas of our current crew of religious science-deniers... and had a direct positive impact on the quality of science textbooks nationwide, because Texas is, like California, a sufficiently large market that all publishers accommodate it. To this day, I am proud of him, and proud to be his son.
What a wonderful testimonial to your Dad, Steve. He sounds like the kind of teacher kids would come back to visit when they are grown.
I am surrounded by teachers, administrators, scientists, mathematicians et al in my family. So I am impressed he got on the science textbook committee, that's a 'walking on eggs' type of job and highly political. You have to be tough!
I'm going to go Google the Gablers and find out more about this eternal war on science I'm so unaware of... (do I really have to say 'of which I am unaware?...)
Right now I'm reading Galileo's Daughter which is about Galileo's trial with the Vatican. While being a religious man, he could not fathom why religion would resist what science would uncover. He felt it was honoring God to understand His creation.
Yet, in this day and age, here we are again...isn't it bizarre?
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