News: SC Education Board approves textbook, despite questions.

Posted on Wed, Jan. 09, 2008
http://www.charlotte.com/205/story/438860.html

SC Education Board approves textbook, despite questions
By SEANNA ADCOX
Associated Press Writer

COLUMBIA, S.C. --
The South Carolina Education Board approved a biology textbook
Wednesday for public schools, despite questions from critics worried
about how the book teaches evolution.

The board voted 9-7 to approve the textbook's latest edition, which
can be used in ninth- and tenth-grade biology classrooms. Science
teachers from across the state erupted in applause after the vote.

Board member Charles McKinney argued the origin of life is an
incomplete mystery and thinks the book presents evolution as fact
rather than theory.

He asked the board to "carefully weigh the impact that distorted
science opinion presented as scientific truth in adopted text will
have upon youth." He said evolution was used by Nazi Germany and other
totalitarian states as an excuse to kill millions of people.

"I need to assure that neo-Darwinism is not allowed to project lies
that could once again allow the emergence of social Darwinism,"
McKinney said.

The former teacher said teaching evolution doesn't bother him, as long
as students are taught it's an incomplete science. He said he realizes
creationism can't be taught, because the courts have ruled against it.

The book's co-author, Ken Miller, disputed the criticisms and said the
updated book's section on evolution is unchanged from the textbook
already used in South Carolina and all 49 other states.

Miller challenged the board to find a single reference to evolution as
law or fact rather than theory. No one could.

Miller called it absurd and insulting to blame the theory of evolution
for the deaths of hundreds of millions of people. Adolf Hitler and
Joseph Stalin were driven by racism, anti-Semitism and socialist
utopianism, not scientific theory on the origin of the species, he
said.

"It's almost shameful to me that we're spending so much time
questioning whether evolution should be taught in school in 2008,"
said board member Trip DuBard of Florence. "I thought we were beyond
that. If you can't support teaching science to kids, something else is
going on."

Several board members called it embarrassing that so many science
specialists had to come to the meeting to defend a textbook. They also
argued that rejecting the book would send a message to teachers that
their expertise isn't wanted. The textbook was given top ratings last
year by a panel of 11 South Carolina teachers.

In South Carolina, the state pays for textbooks and the state
Education Board approves which can be used in classrooms after a panel
review.

McKinney said he based his objections on critiques by retired Clemson
University botanist Horace Skipper and Pickens County school board
member Oscar Thorsland. The board approved other biology textbooks in
December, but postponed discussion on Miller's because McKinney wanted
to review the complaints.

The objections included that volcanic eruptions have proved geologic
formations can happen in days or months, not millions of years, and
dating methods are unreliable, so the textbook should not refer to
something as billions of years old.

Miller said dating is reliable, and just because some geologic
formations were created quickly doesn't mean everything formed that
way.

"The state of South Carolina has never disappointed me this much,"
said sophomore David Camak, of Ware Shoals, who identified himself as
a biology major and a Christian. He declined to give his college. "It
seems to me that this reviewer does not want students to think at
all."

Clemson professor Jerry Waldvogel said he and his colleagues were
disturbed the complaints came from someone identified as a Clemson
professor. He submitted a letter signed by 130 other Clemson faculty
saying they don't support Skipper's objections.

--
Bob.

.

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