LogFAQs > #886647751

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/09/new-mexico-remove-climate-change-evolution-public-education/



The state’s Public Education Department this week released a new proposed replacement to its statewide science standards. The draft is based on the Next Generation Science Standards, a set of ideas and guidelines released in 2013 that cover kindergarten through 12th grade. The NGSS, which have been adopted by at least 18 states and the District of Columbia, include ample discussion of human-caused climate change and evolution.

But the draft released by New Mexico’s education officials changes the language of a number of NGSS guidelines, downplaying the rise in global temperatures, striking references to human activity as the primary cause of climate change, and cutting one mention of evolution while weakening others. The standards would even remove a reference to the scientifically agreed-upon age of the Earth—nearly 4.6 billion years. (Young Earth creationists use various passages in the Bible to argue that the planet is only a few thousand years old.)


In one instance, as seen in the document below, New Mexico would rewrite a standard about geology intended for middle schoolers. We’ve spoilered out the language the agency removed from the original NGSS guidelines, and we’ve italicized the language the agency added:

Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence from rock strata for how the geologic time scale is used to organize Earth’s 4.6-billion-year-old geologic history.

In another instance, laying out standards for middle schoolers, the new text misrepresents the reality of rising global temperatures:

Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the fluctuation rise in global temperatures over the past century.

A third example would make a similar change to a discussion of climate change for high schoolers:

Analyze geoscience data and the results from global climate models to make an evidence-based forecast of the current rate of global or regional climate change fluctuation and associated future impacts to Earth systems.

A fourth change would cut a mention of evolution in standards intended for high schoolers:

Construct an explanation based on evidence that the process of evolution primarily results from four factors biological diversity is influenced by: (1) the potential for a species to increase in number, (2) the heritable genetic variation of individuals in a species due to mutation and sexual reproduction, (3) competition for limited resources, and (4) the proliferation of those organisms that are better able to survive and reproduce in the environment.

And a fifth change is a newly written standard for New Mexico middle schoolers that appears to be little more than state-sponsored boosterism for the state’s powerful oil and gas industry:

Describe the benefits associated with technologies related to the local industries and energy production.
---

"To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships." -- W.E.B. Du Bois