More Ignorance in Florida

From St. Petersburg Times:

Darwin's theory of evolution helped fuel the rise of Hitler and contributed to the school-shooting massacre at Columbine, a former St. Petersburg City Council member wrote in a letter urging the Pinellas County School Board to expose students to alternative theories.

"Evolution gives our kids an excuse to believe in natural selection and survival of the fittest, which leads to a belief that they are superior over the weak," Bill Foster wrote board members in a letter received this week. "This is a slippery slope."

He continued: "One of the Columbine shooters wrote on his Web site, 'You know what I love? Natural selection! It's the best thing that ever happened to the Earth. Getting rid of all the stupid and weak organisms.'"

Foster's letter comes in the midst of an increasingly emotional tug-of-war over the state's proposed new science standards, which embrace Charles Darwin's theory as the fundamental pillar of modern biology. The current standards, written in 1996, do not mention the word "evolution."

(full article)

Kids paying for holy war over evolution

From an Op-Ed piece on MiamiHerald.com, a few choice excerpts:

"We're opposed to teaching evolution as a fact", said Oscar Howard Jr., superintendent of the Taylor County, Florida School District.

According to Danny Lundy, vice chairman of the School Board, "'The 'good people' back home" would have "no choice" but to pull their kids out of school.

(full article)

Impositions on understanding the whole process, imposed by those not understanding the whole process.

It is shameful that this ignorant attitude still prevails in many parts of the same country I call home. It's long past time for the rest of our population to wake up, grow up, and give up their childish mythologies; yet exactly the opposite seems to be happening in these areas. These are decent, caring people, so misguided by religious ignorance as to "protect" their children from the very things that could finally wrest them from their abject ignorance and in many cases poverty. And they vote.

The Huckster’s Artful Dodging on Evolution

From insidehighered.com:

In a January 8 article, Inside Higher Ed profiled former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee’s record on issues important to education. While Andy Guess gave a sterling summary of his record on issues specifically related to higher education, professors need to take a closer look at Huckabee’s record on the teaching of evolution in the public schools — an issue that is not specific to higher education, but that ultimately can have a major impact on science education policy and the nature of intellectual debate in the United States.

(full article)