Two miracles in Texas

[essentialsaltes]

Because of its size, Texas exerts a lot of influence on school textbooks, and this often has detrimental effects on the science content of textbooks, but things have been improving.

A reviewer (a chemical engineer by training) predictably complained about the evolution content in Pearson's (dba Prentice Hall) Biology.

Miracle #1: Rather than mushifying or deleting the 'offending' passages, Pearson stood up to the criticism. And produced a lovely (if rather technical (because actual biologists)) document rebutting all of the points.

I say it's a miracle, because this was something of a risk, since the text now faced further scrutiny by the Board of Education, which appointed a panel of experts.

Miracle #2: the Texas BOE appointed a panel of actual experts in biology.

And the book was approved.

Comments

[britgeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

Whoa. For Texas, that IS amazing...

[ladyeuthanasia.livejournal.com]

The scary thing is that the person criticizing the text knows quite a bit of science and yet twists (and omits) it so that it says something else. No wonder so many Christians are led to believe that there's "controversy."

Or am I misreading the PDF?

[essentialsaltes.livejournal.com]

No, I think you're right. The criticisms largely come from people who are unashamed to lie for Jesus. And the rank-and-file don't suspect they're being fed lies, and accept statements that reinforce their prejudices.