Georgia school district to remove evolution disclaimer stickers from textbooks

[maelorin]

Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Kate Heneroty at 10:50 AM ET

[JURIST] The Cobb County School District [official website] on Tuesday agreed to remove anti-evolution stickers [ACLU press release] from its high school biology textbooks. In 2002, parents sued the suburban Atlanta school district claiming the stickers violated the separation between church and state by promoting religion in the classroom. In January 2005, a federal district court ordered the removal of the stickers [text; JURIST report]. The school board appealed the decision and in May the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit remanded the case [JURIST reports] to the district court on the issue of whether the school district's actions were "religiously neutral."

The settlement ends the legal battle which began when the district placed a sticker in 35,000 biology textbooks calling evolution "a theory, not a fact." To settle the case, the school district also agreed not to take any action which would undermine the teaching of evolution in high school classrooms.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution has more.

Comments

[obsoletechild.livejournal.com]

HALLELUJAH!!!

Thank GOD they did that. What a stupid, ignorant thing to put on a SCIENCE book anyway. Everything in a science textbook is a theory to some extent or another. It only contains hypotheses of varying certainty that haven't yet been disproven.

I don't see them putting disclaimers on the Bible:

The text contained herein has not been conclusively verified or disproven. As with all historical counts recorded by human beings, it may be subject to transcription error or colored by the beliefs or feelings of the author. The facts alleged in the Bible are nothing more than one recordation of a period in time, and are unverifiable in their ancient nature.

[maelorin]

Scientific understanding has been under attack by vested interested (ignorant and otherwise) since long before we had recognisable "science" ... belief is a far more potent motivator than knowledge.

My personal hypothesis is that most people 'feel' rather than 'think' ... they make decisions based upon what they feel rather than thinking about things. I'd go so far as to say that a large proportion of people are so averse to thinking they'll do anything to avoid it. [thinking is hard, and feels bad/difficult - besides they don't really know how, and fear of failure/mistakes is a powerful motivator. much easier to follow what you're told is the right thing to do ...]

I don't see them putting disclaimers on the Bible:
Actually, in response to the textbook labelling, some atheists did pretty much exactly that ...
eg:

truthiness

[thork.livejournal.com]

Colbert would agree with your hypothesis

[obsoletechild.livejournal.com]

Wish I could see that disclaimer.

Linky no worky.

[arsenchik.livejournal.com]

Yep. It's a theory, just like Euclidean geometry and Einstein's theory of relativity. What matters is the all of them are the best at modelling the physical reality when properly applied. But you don't see them trying to put disclaimers in geometry or physics books (though I think in America they don't do physics as a separate subject in high school). I suspect, though, that if they are successful in challenging evolution, they will then set their sights on physics, astronomy, etc.

Already, Grand Canyon park rangers are not allowed to state how old the canyon is according to modern geology.

The thing is, people completely ignorant of science are tryng their hand in setting science curriculum.

stupid design

[maelorin]

stupid begets stupid.