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The Center for Inquiry Speaks Up for Science Before
Embattled Texas State Board of Education

 

Members of Center for Inquiry Austin took the microphone in turns before the Texas State Board of Education Wednesday to voice outrage that the Board was snubbing real science in a creationist-sympathetic effort to undermine the teaching of evolutionary theory.  The aim of the Board, under the thinly veiled guise of academic free inquiry, is to create the false dichotomy of a controversy concerning human origins.

Just as Dr. Barbara Forrest warned after the Dover trials, the keywords have changed again, and efforts to inject “Intelligent Design” into science classes have been replaced by calls to teach “the strengths and limitations” of the widely accepted scientific Theory of Evolution.  The final decisions of the Board will dictate what textbooks are used in the state’s science curriculum.  The cost of those books—whether pro- or anti-science—would then come down, making them the only financially sensible choice for school districts in much of the rest of the nation.

Dozens of concerned citizens used the high visibility of the SBOE meeting to demonstrate with signs, buttons, and costumes.  CFI-Austin Executive Director Clare Wuellner attracted the attention of local news teams by attending the meeting dressed as a mid-19th Century schoolmarm.

“I’m wearing garb that would be appropriate for a woman in 1860, which is the time when the theory of evolution was actually controversial,” Wuellner told KI-FM News, the local NPR affiliate.

Another demonstrator, dressed as a giant plush dinosaur, held a sign asking Board President Don McLeroy, “How old am I?  4,000 or 64,000,000 (years)?”

“I think the press we got was good and we made an impression,” Wuellner commented following a report from a blogger in attendance. “No one will think pro-evolution folks in Texas are asleep.”

 

Said Wuellner, “I was extremely proud of the CFI Austin folks who testified.  I know they put a lot of time into their testimonies and were there all day waiting for their 3 minutes of facetime.  The same people who were there—and many more—are working overtime to protect science education in Texas.”

 

 

 

The Chickasaw Plum  -  Volume V - Number 12 - December 2008

 

 

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