The Kansas school board to repeal science guidelines backed by social conservatives

[Kadie]

Kansas rewriting science standards
By JOHN HANNA, Associated Press Writer
6 minutes ago


TOPEKA, Kan. - The Kansas school board, long ridiculed for its resistance to teaching evolution, prepared Tuesday to repeal rules backed by social conservatives and switch to science guidelines that embrace Charles Darwin's mainstream theories.

The new board, with a 6-4 majority of Democrats and moderate Republicans, was to debate and vote on what would be the fifth set of science standards for public schools in eight years.

The existing standards suggest widely accepted evolutionary concepts — like a common origin for all life on Earth and changes in one species leading to a new one — are challenged by new evidence. Those rules, adopted in 2005, were pushed by supporters of "intelligent design," which holds that life is so complex that it must have been created by a higher authority.

An alternative, drafted by scientists and educators, would treat evolution as well-supported by research. It also would rewrite the standards' definition of science to limit it to the search for natural explanations for what is observed in the universe.


more...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070213/ap_on_re_us/evolution_debate_1

[Missy M]

1. Does this mean our country is finally starting to come back to....

its senses. I can only hope.

[salin]

3. far from a tidal wave - but much bigger than a early ripple

Seems to indicate the tide is finally beginning to turn away from the grip of the politicized talibornagain.

[Warpy]

2. Wow, Kansas finally woke up!

I knew they'd voted out all Falwell's "stealth candidates," i.e. religious lunatics. I'm just glad the people they voted in are trying to drag the state back into the twentieth century, kicking and screaming.

Maybe after another decade of being exposed to reality they'll join the twenty first century.

[TheLeftyMom]

7. Don't hold your breath

Aside from the two or three large cities, it's still 1880 here.

[slackmaster]

8. It's like that stupid Whack-A-Mole game at Chuck E. Cheese's

You can knock them down all day, and they keep coming back.

[ceile]

4. I'll admit I'm pretty surprised.

Good job, Kansas.

[Mabus]

5. Why the surprise?

We re-elected our Democratic governor, Kathleen Sebelius. We ousted a five-time GOP incumbent from congress and replaced him with a Democrat. We got rid of a GOP fundamentalist AG and replaced him with a Dem. The state chair of the GOP resigned because of all the losses the GOP experienced in Kansas. And, best of all, some of moderate Republicans who were defeated in the primaries stepped up to support and campaign for Democrats. We've also had high profile defections from the GOP to the Democratic Party because the GOP is running itself into the ground. In other words, we Kansas Dems been working our asses off and thanks to funding from the 50 State Strategy we've made a lot of headway.

If we can do it here, it can be done everywhere else. All we need to do is to step and take action.

[LeftishBrit]

6. GREAT!!!!

[etherealtruth]

9. Good for the children of Kansas

They were the ones that truly lost with the "nutjob' school board.

[ourbluenation]

10. A victory for all things reasonable. Good for them.

:)