Kansas school board passes anti-evolution standards.Kansas school officials have implemented statewide standards aimed at undercutting the teaching of evolution in the public schools. On Nov. 8, the Kansas Board of Education voted 6-4 to adopt science standards proposed by Religious Right activists. The new standards state that evolution is in controversy among scientists and that there are other valid scientific theories for students to consider. Science is re-defined as not being limited to natural explanations of life's origins. The Discovery Institute, the primary proponent One who offers or proposes. A proponent is a person who comes forward with an a item or an idea. A proponent supports an issue or advocates a cause, such as a proponent of a will. PROPONENT, eccl. law. of "intelligent design" (ID), lauded the Kansas board's action, calling the adopted policies "the best science standards in the nation." The new Kansas science package is even more troubling than one approved by the board in 1999. Those standards downgraded the teaching of evolution in the public schools by removing questions about evolution from statewide student tests. Anti-evolution board members were subsequently ousted in 2000. But the board was again taken over by Religious Right activists in 2004, and they proceeded quickly to throw the state back into the creationism/evolution debate. Americans United for Separation of Church and State Americans United for Separation of Church and State (Americans United or AU for short) is a religious freedom advocacy group in the United States which promotes the separation of church and state, a legal doctrine seen by the AU as being enshrined in the Establishment , which is currently challenging an ID policy at a Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (pĕnsəlvā`nyə), one of the Middle Atlantic states of the United States. It is bordered by New Jersey, across the Delaware River (E), Delaware (SE), Maryland (S), West Virginia (SW), Ohio (W), and Lake Erie and New York public school district, is looking into the constitutionally troubling situation in Kansas. Kansas Citizens for Science Kansas Citizens for Science (KCFS) is a science advocacy organization, incorporated as a not-for-profit 501(c)(3), that "promotes a better understanding of what science is, and does, by: advocating for science education, educating the public about the nature and value of science, called the standards an effort to promote "a sectarian sec·tar·i·an adj. 1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of a sect. 2. Adhering or confined to the dogmatic limits of a sect or denomination; partisan. 3. Narrow-minded; parochial. n. 1. religious view." The group's president said the state board was "treading treading a part of a restlessness syndrome or a neurosis in ruminants or horses; the patient repeatedly changes weight from one limb to the opposite of the pair, lifting the hoof slightly at each change; the action looks as though the patient is treading grapes to make wine. on constitutional grounds." |
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