Meanwhile, over in...Azerbaijan?

Apparently, Azerbaijan is experiencing some controversy regarding the age of the earth.  Durna Safarova of Eurasianet.org writes:

“And it is He who created the heavens and the earth in six days.” Thus read the draft version of a proposed textbook for 10th-grade geography students in Azerbaijan in a section about how the universe was formed. As homework, the book suggested that students prepare presentations on verses from the Koran, referring them to the Azerbaijani-language website quran.az.

The textbook draft was posted online at the end of March for public comment: it quickly became a hot discussion topic as Azerbaijan wrestles to determine the proper place of religion in public life. In response to the posted draft, a group of parents, scientists, and public figures used social media to organize a campaign against what they described as a government imposition of religious propaganda on their children.

As the story notes, Azerbaijan is almost unique in the region as being a largely secular state, due to years of rule by the Soviet Union.  It is surrounded by Islamic nations, however, and Islam is becoming more commonplace.  This textbook is a reflection of that.  Safarova continues:

“Until now, history books have only presented the theory of evolution,” said Kamran Asadov, the author of the 10th-grade history textbook. “Students should make the choice for themselves about what is correct.”

Others, though, worry about the impact of religion, and especially the growing influence of creationism and other forms of pseudoscience. Azerbaijanis, curious about new ideas after the collapse of the Soviet Union, were favored targets for creationist missionaries from Turkey.

The idea that students should make up the choice for themselves about which is correct is absurd, on its face. It is the kind of thing that is commonplace among young earth creationists, that we have access to the same facts, we just interpret them differently.  This will be a hard thing to fight for the same reason it is hard to fight in the United States: the acceptance of creationism is tied to an acceptance of the one true religion.  People don't tend to think clearly about science if they are driven by this perspective. 

More on the Louisiana School Voucher Program

I have a tendency to support school vouchers because it allows students to escape horrible schools for which they are zoned and steps up the accountability of the public schools to at least try to give students a good education. Using those vouchers to promote creationism, however, is not acceptable. Change.org also thinks so and is circulating a petition to that effect. They write, in part:

Northeast Baptist School, in West Monroe, approved for 40 voucher slots and $340,000 in taxpayer dollars, uses ABeka and Bob Jones University science textbooks. Researcher and writer Rachel Tabachnick, who examined these textbooks, reports that it is “clear that no instruction is included in the text that would conflict with young earth creationism.” Using such books endangers the educational prospects of students in Christian schools. In 2010, the University of California won a federal lawsuit, ASCI [Association of Christian Schools International] v. Stearns, in which the judge ruled in favor of UC’s right to refuse to recognize high school credits for science classes taken in Christian schools that used such books. UC contended that such instruction is “inconsistent with the viewpoints and knowledge generally accepted in the scientific community."

I am actually surprised, on one level, that the UC decision has not gained more airplay, since it should have had a far-reaching impact on the home school movement. Many universities may simply not want to involve themselves at that level, however.

Between this story and the search for the Loch Ness Monster, I smell a large class-action suit in the wind that may make Dover look like a small affair. On one level, I certainly hope so. On another, I grieve for how this will hurt the voucher program. It gives those opposed to it unnecessary ammunition and if, based on this, other states torpedoed voucher programs, who could blame them? All in all, an unwise move on Jindal's part.

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“Dear South Korea, thank you for making us look less stupid. Sincerely, the United States of America.”

That, according to a story in TES, is a reader's comment on the story that young earth creationism is making inroads in South Korea. Michael Fitzpatrick writes:

Long thought of as an American problem among developed countries, the South Korean government recently surprised everyone by allowing school textbook publishers to leave out examples that demonstrate Darwin's theory of evolution at work.

Following a creationist campaign by one of South Korea's many vociferous Christian groups - some of whom recently tried to ban Lady Gaga from the country - Korea's education ministry unexpectedly gave the OK for the deletion. What is even more remarkable is that such removals were only "suggestions" from the government, but seven science textbook publishers forged ahead with the changes anyway. As a consequence, references to the theory of evolution, such as the avianhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif ancestor archaeopteryx and "the changes of horse over time", have disappeared from textbooks.

More surprisingly still for a country that is viewed by some in the West as a sine qua non when it comes to excellence in science education, the Society for Textbook Revise, which wants so-called "intelligent design" taught at schools, counts professors of biology and high school science teachers among its ranks. They are not alone. According to Nature magazine, a survey of trainee teachers in the country found that 40 per cent of biology teachers agreed with the statement that "much of the scientific community doubts if evolution occurs", and half disagreed that "modern humans are the product of evolutionary processes".

When one looks at the Earth at night image,
there is a sharp line between North and South Korea because of the economic development in South Korea. Further, I have read that South Korea is the most internet-connected country in the world. How has this idea that has so poisoned science education here in the United States gained traction? This will have severe consequences for science education overall and biological education in specific. Some of the most exciting areas of emerging science are biomedical and genomic research. Both rely heavily on an understanding of how selection and mutation work. Without those underpinnings, the South Korean students will fall behind. That the textbook writers were so complicit in the actions is unconscionable. As the scientists in Texas and Louisiana fought back, so must those in South Korea or soon, they will be unable to compete in these areas.

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Textbook Trouble in Florida

In the first of three articles on the subject, the Orlando Sentinel reported on some trouble that a science textbook publisher has found itself in. In the September 30 paper, Leslie Postal wrote:

The publishers of a marine-science textbook that critics say contains pro-creationism material has agreed to remove two offending pages from editions sold to Florida schools, state officials said.

An advisory group, made up mostly of educators, that reviewed the book on CD-ROM last week recommended that "Life on an Ocean Planet" be approved only if the pages were cut, a participant said.

The Florida Department of Education said the publisher has agreed. Current Publishing, in California, did not respond to a request for comment.

The second article, which ran later the same day, also by Postal, had a bit more information about the controversy:

The book, Life on an Ocean Planet, was one of 22 reviewed by a group (made up mostly of educators) asked to recommend high school life sciences materials. The two participants I spoke with said the book stood out because of those two pages, which seemed intent on misinforming students or rehashing discredited ideas.

Both said that book was in stark contract to the others they reviewed –most for various high school biology courses . The other textss [sic], they said, were top-notch and dealt with evolution head on, as required under Florida’s new science standards. The Florida Department of Education said last week that the book’s publisher had agreed to remove the pages that raised red flags, but I never heard back from Current Publishing to confirm that.

In the third article, which ran October 4,the textbook company, Current Publishing, defended their position. Postal writes:

The criticized “sidebar” passages in a marine science textbook proposed for Florida high schools were meant to be a “critical thinking exercise for students” and not a way to undermine the teaching of evolution, said a vice president with Current Publishing, the text’s publisher.

The textbook Life on an Ocean Planet was developed for Florida’s marine science courses in 2005 and revised recently to meet the state’s new science standards, said Dean Allen, the company’s vice president and general manager.

The book doesn’t attempt to mislead or undermine the teaching of evolution, he insisted.

The odd thing about all three stories in the Sentinel is that no part of the sidebar information is either extracted or referenced. Those reading the story have no idea what was in the sidebar that was offensive. For that we have to go to the NCSE, which replicates the sidebars. They write:

The sidebar makes a variety of historical and scientific errors. For example, it claims that in the Origin of Species "Darwin proposed that life arose from nonliving matter"; it equates microevolution with genetic drift; and it contends that selective breeding demonstrates genetic drift. Moreover, although the sidebar acknowledges that "the vast majority of biologists (probably more than 95%)" accept evolution, it also airs, without attempting to debunk, a variety of creationist claims (which are attributed to unnamed "skeptics"). Among these claims: that the fossil record "does not contain the many transitional species one would expect," that "evolution doesn't adequately explain how a complex structure ... could come to exist through infrequent random mutations," that transitional features could not be favored by natural selection, and that "the hypotheses that ... chemicals can lead to abiogenesis are highly debatable."

It is difficult to believe that some of the committee that wrote the textbook did not put these passages in on purpose in the hopes that they would not be noticed. The bullet points in the sidebar are ID "talking points" and are straight out of the "academic freedom" playbook championed so heavily by the Discovery Institute. It would also be naive to think that this is not the only place they will show up. The bad thing here is that the writers of the textbook should have known better. The good thing is that the misinformation was caught.

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