On Monday the Ohio Board of Education was slated to vote on the most recent development in the religious right's war on science education; a "Controversial Issues Template" that not only attacked evolution, but expanded this war on science to education around global warming and stem cell research.
In light of this attack on education, 20,000 DefCon members sent the Ohio Board of Education a whopping 140,000 emails demanding they put science education above the agenda of the religious right, and vote this proposal down.
Now that these creationists have been exposed, they are running scared.
Check this out, from the
Akron Beacon Journal, emphasis is mine:
A State Board of Education proposal that critics say could bring creationist teaching into science classrooms appears to be stalled. Meanwhile, evolution backers raised questions Tuesday about the board altering records to remove traces of its involvement in the potentially explosive issue.
Incredible. By shining a light on these extremists, something that as evidenced here they can not handle, we were actually able to make much of the questionable language disappear. This proposal still contains "teach the controversy" language, and therefore still poses a real threat to science education, but the singling out of global warming and stem cell research, a major development in the religious right's war on science, has vanished. I wish I could say this proves DefCon members enjoy some sort of magic power that, when activated, shields Americans from the dangerous agenda of the religious right -- a 21st century version of Captain Planet. Instead, if just reinforces the reality that these anti-science proposals are entirely unfounded, and the creationists know it.
More from the article:
Steve Rissing, an Ohio State University professor and evolution backer, said the changes in the minutes are significant.
"The corrected minutes bear no resemblance to what I saw and what I heard,'' Rissing said.
The template's author, Colleen Grady, a board member from Strongsville, pushed during Monday's meeting to remove language referring to evolution, global warming, stem-cell research and cloning technologies that were in the original standards introduced in July.
The two scientists maintain Grady introduced these specific ideas in July and they were contained in the minutes assembled then, but the board's rewriting of those minutes has deleted references to these controversial ideas.
Unfortunately the lack of vote means that this proposal could resurface at next month's board meeting; this may in fact be their strategy, hoping that by then the heat will be off.
They wish.......
Crossposted at DefConBlog.org