Proposed NM State Science Education Standards Will Omit Global Warming, Evolution, Earth's Age

[hatrack]

SANTA FE – A proposed overhaul of New Mexico’s state science standards for public schools came under intense criticism Monday at a packed public hearing in the state capital for omitting or deleting references to global warming, evolution and the age of the Earth. Comments at the hearing overwhelmingly sided against state revisions to a set of standards developed by a consortium of states and the National Academy of Sciences. Of the 55 initial speakers, none backed the standards.


Public school teachers, state university faculty, Democratic Party officials and the science chairman for a school catering to local Native American students urged the Public Education Department, led by a recent appointee of Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, to throw out its proposed changes and adopt unedited standards.

William Pockman, a professor and chairman of the biology department at the University of New Mexico, said state revisions would put local students at a disadvantage in the study of genetics in medicine and solutions to climate change.

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It was unclear how soon final standards will be adopted by the Public Education Department led by Ruszkowski, a former social studies teacher appointed in August to lead the agency. Ruszkowski has said he and the agency developed custom-tailored science standards in cooperation with the governor’s office based on informal conversations with students, teachers and parents as education officials toured the state to develop a broad, five-year education plan under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, along with other encounters. The agency has declined requests to name anyone it met with, as speculation by critics has swirled around possible political motives and concessions to doubters of human-caused climate change and scientific evolutionary theory.

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https://durangoherald.com/articles/189472-proposed-new-mexico-science-standards-omit-global-warming

[Girard442]

1. I think the blue states should advertise to families with children.

"Come to our state where our schools teach 21st century knowledge."

Let the red states sink into that morass of third-world theocratic-based ignorance they so desperately crave.

[hunter]

2. Turns out you can teach ignorance.

Authentic universities ought not accept any high school biology classes that don't teach the age of the earth or evolution. Make the kids take real biology classes before they can enroll, or assign them remedial biology classes they must pass within their freshmen year as a condition of their continued enrollment.

Anyone who doesn't accept the age of the earth and evolution doesn't know biology. Evolution is the foundation of all biology.

Evolution even explains most medical problems humans suffer, as in why the hell would any loving creator build us like that??? There are so many blatantly obvious design flaws that are inexplicable except in the light of evolution.

I don't understand the god of the Creationists. If we humans were directly engineered by this god, made from clay, I figure this god is a mean drunk and/or a dangerous psychotic. Maybe that's why Trump appeals to certain evangelical Christians. Trump is a lot like their god. He's mean, dissembling, and capricious.

The climate change deniers are just as awful, and religious beliefs frequently play a part in their denials too. They simply can't believe their god would have "given" us all those fossil fuels if he hadn't meant for us to burn them.