NCSE Evolution and Climate Education Update for 2017/07/28
Submitted by Peter Burns on Fri, 2017-07-28 10:59.
National Center for Science Education
(by NCSE Deputy Director Glenn Branch)
Dear friends of NCSE, BioScience reviews 2017's antiscience bills. And a preview of Teaching Evolution in a Creation Nation.
A LEGISLATIVE ROUND-UP IN BIOSCIENCE "In statehouses around the country, the 2017 legislative session saw a flurry of attacks on science education," according to a story in the August 2017 issue of BioScience, published by the American Institute of Biological Sciences. "This was 'on the busy side of normal,' according to Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, in Oakland, California." The article focused on two bills. Florida's House Bill 989 was intended to make it easier for Floridians to challenge instructional materials used in the public schools, and its backers explicitly cited evolution and climate change as topics to which they took objection. The bill passed and was enacted in June 2017. Oklahoma's Senate Bill 393 would have empowered teachers to misrepresent "controversial" subjects and prevented administrators from restraining them. The bill passed the Senate but stalled in the House of Representatives. Bills like Oklahoma's are common, with over seventy introduced, often under the rubric "academic freedom," since 2004. NCSE's Branch received the last word: "Branch notes that the 2017 legislative session was a further weakening of that strategy, with academic freedom laws being rewritten as nonbinding resolutions that passed in Alabama and Indiana. 'I would expect to see a lot more resolutions like that in states where sponsors have failed,' said Branch. 'At least they got something across the finish line.'" For the story in BioScience, visit: https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/doi/10.1093/biosci/bix077/3958803/Evolution-Education-and-State-Politics?guestAccessKey=4aa67e94-c677-4ce3-bb10-2228b6f83970 And for NCSE's previous coverage of events in Florida and Oklahoma, visit: https://ncse.com/news/florida https://ncse.com/news/oklahoma A GLIMPSE OF TEACHING EVOLUTION IN A CREATION NATION NCSE is pleased to offer a free preview of Adam Laats and Harvey Siegel's Teaching Evolution in a Creation Nation (University of Chicago Press, 2016). The preview consists of chapter 3, "The Dog That Didn't Bark," which discusses "the long period between roughly 1930 and 1960 in which the issue [of evolution education] disappeared from the nation's headlines. However, people hadn't stopped caring about it." "What do you get when you cross a historian and a philosopher? If it’s Laats and Siegel, the answer is Teaching Evolution in a Creation Nation. Thoughtful and provocative, historically detailed and philosophically informed, this book is a must for anyone interested in understanding the conflict over evolution education in the United States," wrote NCSE's deputy director Glenn Branch. For the preview (PDF), visit: http://ncse.com/files/pub/evolution/excerpt--teaching.pdf And for information about the book from its publisher, visit: http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo22541379.html WHAT'S NEW AT NCSE'S BLOG? Have you been visiting NCSE's blog recently? If not, then you've missed: * Emily Schoerning reporting from the National Science Teachers Association's National Congress on Science Education: https://ncse.com/blog/2017/07/hear-from-americas-science-teachers-0018584 For NCSE's blog, visit: http://ncse.com/blog Thanks for reading. And don't forget to visit NCSE's website -- http://ncse.com -- where you can always find the latest news on evolution and climate education and threats to them. -- Sincerely, Glenn Branch Deputy Director National Center for Science Education, Inc. 1904 Franklin Street, Suite 600 Oakland CA 94612-2922 510-601-7203 fax 510-788-7971 branch@ncse.com http://ncse.com Check out NCSE's blog: http://ncse.com/blog Read Reports of the NCSE on-line: http://reports.ncse.com Subscribe to NCSE's free weekly e-newsletter: http://groups.google.com/group/ncse-news NCSE is on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter: http://www.facebook.com/evolution.ncse http://www.youtube.com/NatCen4ScienceEd http://twitter.com/ncse NCSE's work is supported by its members. Join today! http://ncse.com/join
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