Friday, November 30th, 2007
Forward to the Past
Did I fall through a time warp and end up in 1925 or something? Is it illegal now to even mention evolution in e-mails? That seems to be the message that the Texas Education(?) Agency seems to be sending by pressuring its Director of Science Curriculum, Chris Comer, into resigning for having the temerity to announce in e-mail a talk by a key witness in Kitzmiller v. Dover, one Barbara Forrest.
Apparently, Comer was ratted out by a creationist coworker named Lizzette Reynolds, and the pressure to resign met with State Board of Education Chair Don McLeroy’s approval. Joy.
It gets worse. Texas is gearing up to revise its science education standards, and there’s a lot of pressure from within the SBOE and from without to pull a Kansas and “deemphasize” evolution (translation: dump evolution in favor of “goddidit”). And creationists complain they’re being shut out of academia. Seesh!
The best commentary on this travesty comes from The Austringer, who writes:
Apparently, not being a team player in the The Republican War on Science is a firing offense at the TEA. Why forwarding an announcement concerning a talk whose topic is highly relevant to the conduct of science education by an internationally recognized speaker should cause TEA administrators a problem escapes me. One is forced to wonder whether Ms. Comer would be looking for a new job if instead she were forwarding emails announcing talks by DI fellows about “intelligent design” creationism.
Let’s take stock here. Will the Discovery Institute come forward to say that the TEA is repressing Ms. Comer’s free speech rights? Will they urge her to become the star of the “Expelled” movie? After all, she did actually lose her job over her stance on evolution in education, as opposed to various people noted as being featured in the film who did not. But the DI is unlikely to do so because Ms. Comer is on the opposite side of the issue from them. They aren’t defending a principle, they are pushing a particular line of propaganda.
Indeed.
