The creationists at the Discovery Institute are pushing hard to get their agenda adopted by the Texas Board of Education; this press release was just sent to my email address, and it’s a textbook example of the distorted turnspeak they use to promote their pseudo-scientific nonsense.

Note that they’re attempting to portray themselves as defenders of science, when in truth, for all the money they spend on efforts like this, they have yet to produce a single piece of scientific research that supports their disguised creationism. This tactic is an outrageously dishonest sham.

Don’t Mess with Texas Education
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills Decision on Science Curriculum

Seattle, WA – On March 25 - 27 the Texas State Board of Education will meet to update its academic standards, known as the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), in the area of science. Writing committees working for the Texas Education Agency (TEA) proposed revised TEKS that would largely eliminate the “strengths and weaknesses” language found throughout the existing science curriculum in regards to evolution, making critical thinking of the theory obsolete as an essential part of learning.

“The removal of this language would be seen as a big victory for many Darwinian scientists, but it would be a huge loss to science, biology, and American students,” says Casey Luskin, Program Officer for Public Policy and Legal Affairs at The Discovery Institute. “The TEKS should not include pejorative or inaccurate language in their definition of science, but it should encourage students to understand how scientists think skeptically and critically and engage in scientific debate in problem solving. Looking at the ‘strengths and weakness’ of a theory is essential to scientific reasoning.”

If the Texas State Board of Education removes the word “weaknesses” from the TEKS science curriculum when studying evolution, classrooms nationwide will likely follow since Texas is the second-leading textbook buyer in the country.

The Discovery Institute maintains that the TEKS should not only retain the ‘strengths and weaknesses’ language, but strengthen critical thinking skills by explicitly applying this approach to the study of specific scientific theories and hypotheses, including biological and chemical evolution.