To follow up on a story Amanda included in Friday’s Quickies, Louisiana’s Textbook/Media/Library/Advisory Council met yesterday and voted 8 to 4, recommending that the Board of Education and Secondary Education (BESE) adopt the high school life science textbooks that creationists have been opposing. In short, the Council endorsed the original recommendation from the science textbook committee.
This is of course a good win for our rational friends in Louisiana, but it is currently only a recommendation. The board itself still has to vote. Robert Luhn of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) cautions, and rightly so, that “[This] is at best a brief victory. The real battle will come when BESE meets on December 9.”
If possible, I will update you guys with the results of that meeting as well.
On a related note, Friday’s op-ed in the Baton Rouge Advocate calls for keeping politics out of textbook adoption. http://www.2theadvocate.com/opinion/107375348.html
Check out Education Week’s coverage, too: http://bit.ly/cHYHDF
…and
…NCSE board member Barbara Forrest’s take on the issue: “Textbook Attack in Louisiana” at http://lasciencecoalition.org/
Thanks for the update! Hopefully Louisiana will not follow the path of scientific illiteracy that seems to be raging across this country.