Florida: Final Public Meeting Underway, Part 7
Joanne Wilson. Opposes proposed standards. Teaching our children an unproven lie! Theory of evolution, fine, but not a fact!
27-8-1.
Faye Armitage. Jacksonville. Need to foster a strong biomedical and green technology in Florida. Adopt the standards as drafted.
27-9-1.
[Tech difficulties… –WRE] Strongly oppose…
?? Williams. YEC. Believe the Bible is true. Prophesying. Prayer and Bible reading removed, now if you remove creationism, that’s a further distancing from Christianity. How can you insist on discipline? If it hasn’t been proven as fact, but you teach it as such, how can you expect students to tell the truth.
28-9-1.
ACLU of Florida rep. Separation of church and state if religion taught in science classes. Protect teachers and students from influence of special interests who promote creationism, SciCre, IDC. Evolved to more vague statements, pushing “theory”. Don’t revise the standards to allow Florida to be seduced by the antievolutionists.
28-10-1.
Patricia Weeks. Adult education. Life science standards and evolution as concept underlying biology. Concerned that students aren’t asked to challenge concepts. Denying academic freedom to teach strengths and weaknesses! No recognition of a controversy! Academic freedom exposes all sides of the debate! Want serious critique of evolution! School board member [Walker] exemplifies problem with critical thinking! Don’t send a mixed message where one benchmark doesn’t allow questioning! “Serious scholars”! All theories!
29-10-1.
Omar Gonzalez. Three children in schools. Supports standards. If children are to compete, they need a strong science education. Evolution is a fact, and should be taught as fact. There is a lot of misinformation in antievolution, trans. fossil example. He is a Christian, and evolution and faith are compatible. Please pass these standards.
29-11-1.
Chip Rolke??. BS info systems. Controversial situation with dogmatic statement on evolution. Studied for 26 years, and everyone takes it on faith! Both are models! [Cue McLean. –WRE] Worldviews, this is a debate of worldviews! Can’t prove nothing! 1986 Dawkins/Wilder-Smith debate cited. Wilder-Smith got votes on debate performance! Wow!
30-11-1.
FSU person [missed name]. Supports the standards. Changes could be chaotic. Adopt as-is.
30-12-1.
Jennifer Murphy. Ph.D. in experimental psychology. Current science standards have failed; audience shows this. Supports the proposed standards. Problem with teaching IDC in science class is that there is no basis for “my pastor told me so” in science. There’s not much debate in the scientific community; similar debate in Spanish over what the word for “cat” is. It’s critically important the the proposed standards are adopted.
30-13-1.
Marjorie ??. Second time before the committee. Env. studies teacher. [Robin in BG talking w/someone, wonder what’s up there? –WRE] How does evolution fit with my Christian faith? It doesn’t. Public schools started so children could read their Bibles. Evolution is unproven, godless! Teach it with the challenges and weaknesses! Why subject children to ungodly theories? Do not approve the standards.
31-13-1.
David ??. Educator. Reviewed the benchmarks. Reducing the number of benchmarks is good. However, this creates a problem. Textbooks were adopted using earlier benchmarks. Loses the link between benchmarks and textbooks. So new standards would cost a lot in changing the textbooks. Make some “minor changes” to proposed standards. “Fair and balanced approach”, no dogmatism, strengths and weaknesses of evolution!
32-13-1.
