“Creationists Corrupt Textbook Selection in South Carolina”

The SC State Board of Education has withheld approval of two biology texts on the basis of creationist objections. Unfortunately, we all saw this coming, though how to fight it us still unclear. Via South Carolinians for Science Education (SCSE) over here’s a post that gives the details; below is an excerpt:

… The two books held back for further study were the Miller & Levine”Biology”(Prentice Hall) and the Raven, Johnson, Losos & Singer”Biology”(Glencoe/McGraw Hill).   Both of these titles enjoy sterling reputations nationwide; the latter is a college-level text suggested for use in HS advanced placement courses.   Both texts were approved in September by the state’s high school biology textbook evaluation committee, a panel of 11 educators, most with 20+ years of experience in the classroom.
During October and November, the texts approved by the state Evaluation Committee were sent out for public review to 28 sites – mostly colleges and universities with teacher education programs.   It was during this period of time, that Ms. Kristin Maguire (or one of her colleagues) apparently contacted two outside referees to review the texts, a Dr. Joseph Henson and a Dr. Horace D. Skipper.

Skipper and Henson are young-earth creationists.   Dr. Skipper is listed on the Institute for Creation Research website among the colleagues of Carl Fliermans, an ICR”Associated Scientist.”Henson is on the faculty at Bob Jones University. …

I know this isn’t a feminist issue per se, but I felt compelled to blog about it because it needs attention, which it probably won’t get from main stream media sources that want to write South Carolinians off as a bunch of hopelessly ignorant crackers. Creationists have a long history of treating women like second class citizens, so I anticipate the worst, in terms of more linearly gender related “reforms.”

I’d also like to note the following from “Thoughts From Kansas“:

… A semi-regular theme of TfK’s coverage of polling on evolution is the effect of gender on views of evolution. A Pew poll a year ago found that women were much less likely than men to accept evolution, even when they controlled for education, religion, age, and income.

Which is why I was surprised that the major study of views of evolution published in last week’s Science found no such effect. Gender does have an influence on religion, but when you control for those sorts of causal interactions (using more sophisticated techniques than I expect Pew attempted), the pure effect of gender is almost non-existent. Men are significantly more likely to accept evolution in a statistical sense, but the difference is so small as to be practically unimportant. …

–Ann Bartow