On Tuesday, the Florida Board of Education was going to discuss whether or not children should learn about evolution. We might point a finger and giggle at such silliness, if it weren’t for the fact that a vocal minority over here think that British children shouldn’t learn about evolution either.

The author of an article at Tallahassee.com wrote:

The intensely heated and divisive discussion over the veracity of evolution elevates the updating of standards that were adopted in 1996 — a review of what our students are learning or ought to be learning — to a level of, well, craziness.

We hear lots of talk about world-class education, about our state’s children keeping up with other states and other nations, and preparing them for a future in which science and technology play key roles. The new standards in math and science will be critical to our progressing in that direction.

Suddenly, though, some school districts — including Jackson, Madison and Taylor counties here in the Big Bend — are passing formal resolutions against the inclusion of evolution in the standards. Suddenly, there is grave concern over holes in the fossil record. Suddenly regular citizens are experts in entropy and in what constitutes scientific “theory.”

Curiously, these same opponents aren’t demanding that we not teach atomic theory, even though Einstein attacked one of the philosophical problems of quantum mechanics by saying, “God does not play dice with the universe.” Nor are the critics too worried about gravity, despite incomplete knowledge of how that works.

I especially like the last bit.

And the result of the debate?

A sharply divided State Board of Education decreed today that evolution is a “scientific theory,” not necessarily a fact, that Florida schoolchildren should be exposed to – in the hope that they will be curious and explore science thoroughly.

Chairman T. Willard Fair of Miami cast the deciding vote in a 4-3 decision that ended an hour of lively debate.

Yet another example of ignorance about what a “scientific theory” is.

Tags: Creationism, Florida, Science+education, Theory+of+evolution