The “Science” of Fear Mongering
By Mila Wood
Idahoans For Local Education would like to thank the NCSE for joining the “fear mongers for bad policy” campaign.
This entity sent this article out to shame our elected ed committee into capitulating to a bad policy request by our unelected bureaucracy. The people have spoken, we do not want the state legislating “CONTENT.“
I’m not exactly sure how on earth you could sit through hours of House Education Committee meetings and still simply feel this was about weather theory. Our legislators were correct last year in putting these off when it was discovered that the science committee had submitted the final draft, without public input. That’s a no-no. This year, they are deciding if being manipulated by some executive branch members into adopting something other than what they expect and putting content into law is really the thing to do. The education committee is doing their job!
To be clear, NOTHING in the 2001 standards put any prohibitions on any teaching of any weather theory. Not one. Not to mention that any district can choose to adopt ANY science standards they want as long as those adopted are higher than the minimum set by the state. So, in essence, if these NGSS standards are indeed higher, what is stopping these teachers from using them? Nothing. Just get them adopted by your local school board.
The NCSE quotes the Twin Falls Times-News(February 4, 2018) urging, “For a state government that’s placing a lot of emphasis on STEM education — science, technology, engineering and math — refusing to accept scientific consensus, or, at the very least, teach our students the best science available, is nothing less than shooting ourselves in the foot and handicapping our children.”
Please note their use of the term scientific consensus. That’s really not a thing. Certainly not a thing to be legislated. If we look in the dictionary the word SCIENCE is defined as:
“The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.” Google dictionary. Notice there’s no mention of consensus.
And as for their claim that NGSS is the “ best science available ” well, see the Fordham study. If that isn’t enough, research the abysmal results from states such as Rhode Island that were one of the first to adopt the NGSS- proof’s in the pudding.
Our question for the elected education committee is when will Idaho decide to step off the federally incentivized, bureaucrat backed, race to mediocracy?
The process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner: “I stand for consensus?”
Margaret Thatcher
