Ohio House Bill 597 dead, for now
The authors of House Bill 597, the anti-common core science distorting bill introduced in the Ohio legislature, is dead for now. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer (via NCSE), the bill won't be debated or voted on this term. However, according to the bill's author, Republican State Representative Andy Thompson, the issue will be revived in the next term of the Legislature. I'll note that the Bill's co-author, Republican Speaker Pro Tem Max Huffman, will be term-limited out of the Legislature and thus won't be around to shepherd it.
As I argued previously on the Thumb, the Bill also enshrines a distorted representation of science education, focusing students on memorizing facts rather than learning the processes of science (see here and here and here). I'll be interested to see if that same distortion appears when the issue is revived, if it is in fact revived.
6 Comments
Mike Elzinga · 16 December 2014
When these IDiots start messing around with education, I sometimes yearn for a US population that is literate enough in science that they could mock and laugh at ID/creationists and their political stooges.
On the other hand, it appears that ID/creationists lack the self-awareness to be embarrassed by their own illiteracy and ignorance. And some of these politicians that get elected to state legislatures and the US Congress; Sheesh! How are they even able to walk?
Palaeonictis · 17 December 2014
Palaeonictis · 17 December 2014
I just can't wait until the next creationist scheme comes around.
Frank J · 18 December 2014
Certainly science illiteracy is a huge and growing problem, and the main, if not only reason that radical, paranoid authoritarian pseudoscience peddlers can still get away with as much, 9 full years after âKitzmas.â As polls show, science-literate people do mostly accept evolution (and anthropogenic global warming), even if theyâre devoutly religious or staunchly conservative. The ones that donât just use their literacy to better misrepresent the science to suit their authoritarian agenda, and become anti-science activists, their apparent illiteracy being âfaked for the cause.â
Unfortunately far too many people who claim to accept evolution (or the caricature that they think is evolution) are unacceptably science-literate, as are the growing number of those who claim to be âunsure.â That adds up to a majority of people, and they are the ones we need to focus on, not âcreationists,â as in the committed rank-and-file deniers who wonât admit evolution under any circumstances. Certainly we must counter the pseudoscience peddlers and their trained politicians, but theyâre a tiny minority.
I hope everyone agrees that bombarding people with a lot of science facts will not increase literacy. Understanding and appreciation of science are virtues, taught, and learned, not only in science class, but in the 99+% of waking hours outside of class, and in the many years after oneâs last science class. Unfortunately most nonscience majors, and even many science majors, replace what little they learn about evolution with a common, but seriously misleading false caricature, almost immediately, and retain that caricature for decades. That, IMO, is far more dangerous than all the deliberate actions of ID/creationism peddlers combined.
Richard B. Hoppe · 18 December 2014
Palaeonictis · 22 December 2014
The Bill enshrines how desperate creationists and IDiots have become after almost each court ruling strikes down creatard ploys to inject pseudoscience into the classroom. I`m not saying that there is not still a threat, far from it, with the recent infestation of hooligans into our government, who knows what could happen.
As many say, there are two versions of evolution, the real version of it, which you can find occurring wherever there is life, and the radio version of it, where you can find occurring wherever you have a creationist idiot and a camera.