State curriculum ensures only science taught in science classes
Published Sunday, June 07, 2009 12:05 AM
Bryan-College Station Eagle
By DON McLEROY
Only science belongs in science class; there is no place for any ideology, religious or otherwise, in our science classrooms. Texas' newly adopted science standards will help ensure this academic focus happens, as the State Board of Education has adopted changes in key areas -- especially in the critical area of life's origins and development.
First, every high school science course now requires students to know the National Academy of Sciences' definition of science: "Science is the use of evidence to construct testable explanations and predictions of natural phenomenon as well as the knowledge generated through this process."
The key phrase is "testable explanations." If it is not testable, it is not science.
This definition, properly understood, gives students scientific grounds to challenge any untestable ideology being taught as dogma.
Second, the new standards require greater scientific scrutiny of evolution and the hypothesis that all life is descended from a common ancestor by unguided natural processes (i.e., no designer).
Students will study evidence for common ancestry in the fossil record.
Specifically, they will "analyze and evaluate scientific explanations concerning any data of sudden appearance, stasis and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record."
The sequential pattern of fossils can be considered evidence for evolution, but the other patterns -- sudden appearance and stasis (staying the same) -- can be used to question evolution.
As noted paleontologist and famous evolution spokesman Stephen Jay Gould admitted: "The great majority of species do not show any appreciable evolutionary change at all. These species appear ... without obvious ancestors in the underlying beds, are stable once established and disappear higher up without leaving any descendants. "
Texas students also will get to examine "how" evolutionary processes "created" the amazing complex assemblies that are found in the cell. They now are expected to "analyze and evaluate scientific explanations concerning the complexity of the cell."
Bruce Alberts, while president of the National Academy of Sciences, describes the cell thus: "Proteins make up most of the dry mass of a cell. But instead of a cell dominated by randomly colliding individual protein molecules, we now know that nearly every major process in a cell is carried out by assemblies of 10 or more protein molecules. And, as it carries out its biological functions, each of these protein assemblies interacts with several other large complexes of proteins. Indeed, the entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines. "
Again, students will have an opportunity to question scientifically "how" this factory came into existence.
Science is much more than making observations. It also requires the testing of hypotheses generated by these observations. If it is not testable, it is not science.
Science demands that experiments, not just observations, demonstrate the hypothesis.
Therefore, Texas' new science standards support true scientific honesty in the coverage of subjects such as evolution.
They require students be shown the experiments that demonstrate "how" the evolution hypothesis can or cannot explain the patterns in the fossil record and the complexity of the cell.
This will ensure that science, and only science, is taught in science class.
