Texas Baptist Standard discovers the Texas textbook battles

Headline: Texas textbook battles have national impact

Which we and others have endlessly explained. And?

“What we teach in the public schools matters,” [Charles Haynes, senior scholar at the First Amendment Center in Washington, D.C.] told a group at Northaven United Methodist Church in Dallas during the “Faith & Freedom Speaker Series,” sponsored by the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund.

Yep. There is a fight in under way. So important a fight that in addition to those linked to above, it has attracted the attention of a Hindu expert, gatherings of geeks and, of course, atheists.

Science ambiguously prevails in Texas education

Creationism failed when social conservatives brought "strengths and weaknesses" back to the table today. A "compromise" prevailed in a 13-2 vote.

The adopted compromise says:

In all fields of science, analyze, evaluate and critique scientific explanations by using empirical evidence, logical reasoning, and experimental and observational testing, including examining all sides of scientific evidence of those scientific explanations so as to encourage critical thinking by the student.

Although that language seems clear, this decades-long battle has a way of knotting itself back up into lawsuits.

Evens so, the "strengths and weaknesses" charade is at this level over. Everything appears to be about implementation now.

Texas school board anti-evolutionists lose (again)

Social conservatives failed Thursday to add key creationism-friendly requirements back into the Texas standards for public school science classes and textbooks.

The last-gasp effort died on a deadlocked 7-7 vote of the Texas State Board of Education. The lost motion would have restored a 20-year-old requirement that science classes discuss the so-called weaknesses in the theory of evolution.

Social conservatives did make less important amendments, but the basic teaching of evolution as accepted science will now be written into science textbooks.

This final decision is of overarching importance because the size of the Texas textbook market gives it sweeping, national impact on the way school science textbooks in general are written.