Chris Comer, Director of Science Curriculum for the Texas Education Agency (TEA) sent out an email from her State account that was blatantly political in nature and which she knew was a bad idea.
Surprise! So did her bosses.
She made the political move, and got fired for it. Really, advocating a lecture titled, "Inside Creationism's Trojan Horse," by Barbara Forrest, a well-known anti-Creationist. That's worse than "not neutral." The title of the lecture is blatantly political.
If you want to see a video of Forrest's lecture, this page hasa link to the video, "Barbara Forrest's Inside Creationism's Trojan Horse."
The Red-A blogger,Pharyngula, The Austin American Statesman, and Nature blogger, "The Great Beyond," among others are blaming the politics on the Texas Board of Education. "The Austringer" blogger has the text of the original memo that Ms. Comer sent out.
In my experience, Ms. Comer's boss has it right. In her memo to the Agency, she notes that Ms. Comer either violated what she knew is TEA policy against employees of the State advocating for a political cause or she does not have the understanding that she should. (There's a link to the memo from the boss on the Austin American Statesman link above, but theres some sort of glich in it - it tries to add Japanese script updates to my computer.)
(In the video, go to 1:01/1:09:52: "These people are fanatics. . . . They know they have to get hold of the kids." A little earlier, Forrest stated that the believers are guilty of projection. From this side, it looks like a case of "Pot, Kettle." The last thing Forrest speaks on is the need to watch out for which judges are appoint, the need to teach the teachers to tell students that belief in a Creator is bad science and that "We need to stop electing people who put up with this crap!")
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Politics Bites
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3 comments:
"She made the political move, and got fired for it."
I would think that this would be a very good case for a lawsuit. The Texas Educational Agency Director of Science position is not supposed to be a political appointee.
At any rate, they will now have a very hard time filling this position with anyone other than an obvious political appointee and that is going to make Texas education a further laughingstock.
I misspoke/ mistyped: she quit.
TEA employees are expected to be trainable and - preferably - intelligent.
She sent out an alert to a purely political event on the eve of what promises to be one of the more controversial hearings in Austin for a while. How dumb.
As I said to another one of your comments, the event "Inside Creationism's Trojan Horse," is not "how to teach science," or "a review of the latest research." It's not even another of Forrest's talks, "Should Schools Teach Intelligent Design?"
The video of another event with the same name is available, here. It is "how we beat the creationists in court."
"It is "how we beat the creationists in court.""
Yes, how the judge was convinced that ID = creationism = religion.
Also religious attempts to claim that evolution was not good science failed.
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