Intelligent Design In Pinellas County Schools, FL, A Voting Tax-Payer's Review of The Science Textbook Selection Process.


Intelligent Design In Pinellas County Schools, FL A Voting Tax-Payer's Review of The Science Textbook Selection Process.

January 10, 2006 St. Petersburg, FL :
5/12/06 Update: This developed as suspected and Intelligent Design is not in Pinellas County textbooks or curriculum.

The time for Pinellas County Science textbook adoptions is here again. The cycle comes around every 6 years. This year it was published that a parent/citizen review would be made available at Clearwater High Jan 9th, Gibbs High Jan 10th and Palm Harbor University High Jan 12th. The interesting aspect is that the subject of Intelligent Design is in one of the science books. Now most Americans do not think this is objectionable; as a matter of fact a lot of Americans have a smoldering discontent about the monopoly of Evolutionary dogma in the classroom mainly established by judges in black robes.

I don't really want to discuss the point/counter points except to say that both sides should be freely discussed in the classroom. I don't think this will happen.

I have been involved in public education, of course, as an observant student but mostly as an involuntarily (financially) forced parent seeking the protection of children of faith. However that has led to a significant amount of time donated to the promotion of Hisways.org which is a Christian Ministry and an outreach to people who are in the government education system.

The adoption of the textbook that mentions Intelligent Design in Pinellas County School System has these obstacles:

1. The Parents don't have a say in it. Voters and tax paying Parents have delegated the education task to the state. The state and the FDOE (Congressional money with Orwellian strings; Goals 2000 etc.) have mandated large portions of anti parent education into the local county school boards (SB).

2. The SB members, as well as all citizenry of public schools, have been generationally secularized for 100 years and now have an open hostility to children and parents of faith in Christ; as well as, classical Biblical Principles of education that have been effective for millennial.

3. The media will publicly embarrass and harass in order to censure both SB members and employees who stand up for truth in science! The media is hostile to truth in science.

4. Most public school textbook publishers are secularized and have long histories of books filled with errors of anti truth and anti facts for which they are not even embarrassed. Some publishers of American textbooks are even owned by foreign corporations with a clear counter incentive to misinform American children for their own countries gain in the free market competition of ideas, inventions and products which can only be superior if based on truth, reason and facts.

In this county the process is likely to follow this course:

1. After the public review of the textbooks at the three high schools listed above the decision to select the science books will be by vote of the science teachers in the county. Since we have over 100 schools here that will probably be close to the number of teachers voting.

2. The Supervisor of Science at the Pinellas County School Board Administration will tally the science teachers votes and order the books. Q.E.D.

Here's the rub.

1. I spoke with the Supervisor on Tuesday AM. He said he would email me a list of the textbooks under review. As of 11 AM Thursday I haven't received anything. [I wanted to compare them with the reviews of the Education Research Analysts, an independent textbook reviewer for 25 years in Texas.]

2. We disagreed on where a line might be drawn in the sand that would separate faith and science. He would not agree that a line exists. He was interested in censoring scientific truth even all debate in favor of only evolutionary theory.

3. I called the FL DOE. They said that half of the state money appropriated for textbooks had to be spent on the states approved list. I don't know if the other half could be spent on unapproved books. [ FL Adoption , 2006 Science PDF ], They also confirmed the Super's statement that textbooks can be ordered without certain pages; say the Intelligent Design pages.

4. Super. informed me that the vote would be public information. For accountability purposes I guess you could ask him nicely to produce the vote tally sometime.

Here's rub number 2. There are at least 2 experiences where this parent has had failures at achieving rational, common sense classroom modifications for the children's benefit.

1. Three or four times, over a period of 11-12 years, from the late '80's, a deacon from my church, a high school science teacher, taught my kids evolution in Life Science classes. They came to me with the 'Why' question. Each time I was angry. The deacon and I had heated discussions. In the end it finally sunk in that he "wasn't going to rock the boat". What this means is that he was under evolutionary theorist pressure from his boss and he wasn't going to be a freedom fighter, nor risk a promotion or jeopardize his retirement for only "truth in science" in his classroom. I don't know if the pressure to censor comes from the Supervisor of Science, his boss the SuperIntendent or their boss the school board members nor whether it comes from some legislation, law suit or media coercion. I have seen this kind of pressure exhibited in other areas like reading and history.

2. Over that same period of time I was temporally involved in several local School Advisory Councils (SAC) who were interested in designing their own school's "improvement plan". This is a group of 6 teachers, 6 parents and a legislative liaison that has ties to the FL legislature. I don't know why the legislature is involved. Here is how it works. Parents and teachers can select any improvement they want usually off of a pre approved school board list and be relatively assured that it would be fairly received. The SAC is required to have the "improvement plan list" reviewed and voted up or down by their own school's teachers. Typically the list would be prioritized by the teachers and the top 3 say might be approved. However they might come back with watered down revisions! This is an example of parents being marginalized and excluded because the SAC had no choice but to approve! One of my ideas that wasn't on the SB's approved list would have given the teachers more authority, more control over the children and would have increased classroom control and hence teaching. It was completely beneficial to the teacher, the class and the school. After a struggle to just get it on the "improvement plan list" the teachers voted it down. So where did the pressure come from to make the teachers vote against their own professional interests?

Sidebar:

The Wikipedia is a user edited blog and the information under Intelligent Design is biased: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design . One gets the sense that evolution is established by a secular religious majority rather than scientific truth. And once again the debate is terminated, censorship approved and another leg of The Secularist Religion is established by "Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005) United States federal court judge John E. Jones III ruled that intelligent design is not science and is essentially religious in nature". This is exactly what I would say about evolution! For info. on ID go to: http://www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org/ . ~~The ID people issued a 1 page Press Release on the Kitzmiller decision: http://www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org/Press Release 122105 final .pdf~~ . [Busted link 1/29/07]

Sidebar 2:

There is a large reserve of empty private school classrooms available for education in this county where parents and children can get truth in science.

5/12/06 Update: This developed as suspected and Intelligent Design is not in Pinellas County textbooks or curriculum.

Thank you for your interest and love for our public school children!

BizMin Association, www.neprimer.com/

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