Facing Public Outcry, New Mexico Restores Evolution and Global Warming to Science Standards

[babylonsister]

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/10/new-mexico-reversal-science-education-standards-climate-change/

Facing Public Outcry, New Mexico Restores Evolution and Global Warming to Science Standards
Students will learn the age of the Earth, too.

Andy Kroll
Oct. 18, 2017 5:42 PM


New Mexico’s public education agency announced late Tuesday that it would restore references to evolution, global warming, and the age of the Earth that had been stripped out of the state’s proposed science education standards. The reversal comes after an outcry by teachers, scientists, students, and others—the culmination of which was a day-long public hearing on Monday in which scores of people spoke out against the draft standards.

“Similar to the process in other states, our goal in holding a public hearing is to ensure all those who wanted to discuss these proposed standards would be heard,” Christopher Ruszkowski, New Mexico’s secretary of education, said in a Tuesday statement. “We have listened to the thoughtful input received and will incorporate many of the suggestions into the New Mexico Standards.”

The whole saga began last month when, as Mother Jones first reported, the state’s Public Education Department unveiled a set of draft standards for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education spanning grades K-12. New Mexico’s proposal largely followed the Next Generation Science Standards, a highly regarded model for teaching STEM that has been adopted by 18 states and the District of Columbia. But the state also made several baffling changes of its own, as we explained:

{T}he draft released by New Mexico’s education officials changes the language of a number of NGSS guidelines, downplaying the rise in global temperatures, striking references to human activity as the primary cause of climate change, and cutting one mention of evolution while weakening others. The standards would even remove a reference to the scientifically agreed-upon age of the Earth—nearly 4.6 billion years. (Young Earth creationists use various passages in the Bible to argue that the planet is only a few thousand years old.)

“These changes are evidently intended to placate creationists and climate change deniers,” says Glenn Branch, the deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit group that defends the teaching of climate change, evolution, and other scientific-backed subjects in the classroom. The proposed changes, Branch added, “would dumb down New Mexico’s science education.”

A backlash ensued, with science experts, teachers, and others who were stunned by the state’s anti-science proposals voicing their displeasure with state education officials. New Mexico’s two US senators, both Democrats, wrote that they were “disturbed” by the proposed changes.

more...

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/10/new-mexico-reversal-science-education-standards-climate-change/

[fantase56]

1. NM Gov. Lew Wallace

"All calculations based on experience elsewhere, fail in New Mexico." We are trying so hard to be first in all the bad stuff and last in all the good.......