No. 118 (essentialsaltes) wrote,
No. 118
essentialsaltes

Two miracles in Texas

Because of its size, Texas exerts a lot of influence on school textbooks, and this often has detrimental effects on the science content of textbooks, but things have been improving.

A reviewer (a chemical engineer by training) predictably complained about the evolution content in Pearson's (dba Prentice Hall) Biology.

Miracle #1: Rather than mushifying or deleting the 'offending' passages, Pearson stood up to the criticism. And produced a lovely (if rather technical (because actual biologists)) document rebutting all of the points.

I say it's a miracle, because this was something of a risk, since the text now faced further scrutiny by the Board of Education, which appointed a panel of experts.

Miracle #2: the Texas BOE appointed a panel of actual experts in biology.

And the book was approved.
Tags: book, education, religion, science
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