Michigan Bills
stcynic | October 10, 2006Michigan Citizens for Science (MCFS) is happy to announce that we won a major victory with the State Board of Education on Tuesday. Having failed to have pro-ID language included in a bill earlier this year to harmonize the educational standards for public and charter schools in the state, House Republicans turned their attention to the State Board of Education and attempted to influence that board to include anti-evolution language into the new science standards. The BOE rejected those attempts with a unanimous vote.
Unlike the earlier confrontations on the issue before the House Education…
stcynic | September 22, 2006I just sent a press release to our media contacts around the state of Michigan concerning the DeVos campaign and their false claims of being misrepresented. You can read that press release here.
stcynic | September 21, 2006Dick DeVos, the Republican candidate for governor in Michigan, has confirmed what we already knew from the report of one of our MCFS members in a letter to the editor last week, that he advocates teaching ID in public school science classrooms. The Detroit Free Press reports:
"I would like to see the ideas of intelligent design that many scientists are now suggesting is a very viable alternative theory," DeVos told the Associated Press this week during an interview on education. "That theory and others that would be considered credible would expose our students to more ideas, not less."...…
stcynic | June 7, 2006We've got a sudden rash of ID activity here in Michigan. The MCFS board got word yesterday that the House Education Committee in Michigan was going to hold a hearing this morning on HB 5251, a bill that would require the teaching of all the major ID arguments in public school science classes. We had thought this bill was dead in light of HB 5606, which was signed into law in April. But the pro-ID language had been taken out of that bill, so the sponsors of 5251 have revived it. The language of the bill is as follows:
10) Not later than August 1, 2006, the state board shall revise the…
stcynic | March 9, 2006Or bills, in this case. It turns out that there are now two bills in the state legislature - HB 5606, sponsored by Rep. Palmer, which contains the "arguments for and against" language that will inevitably open the door to ID; and a Senate bill, sponsored by Sen. Kuipers, that doesn't yet have a bill designation and which doesn't contain such language. 5606 has passed the House and has been referred to the Senate Education Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Kuipers. Kuipers doesn't have to bring that bill up for a vote if he doesn't want to, and at the moment it appears that he is going to…
stcynic | February 14, 2006Somehow I missed this from several days ago. Casey Luskin has a post on the DI blog about the Michigan bill that is rather amusing and highly inaccurate. His rhetorical device of choice these days is the notion of "false fear syndrome", whereby the ID movement keeps making its strategy more and more vague and then makes fun of those who actually pay attention to the terminology changes and points out the reality behind those changes.
The entire history of ID creationism is one of increasing vagueness. ID is essentially creationism with all of the potentially testable hypotheses taken out. Now…
stcynic | January 28, 2006We have a new bill here in Michigan that contains language that sounds very objective and unconnected to ID, but that will obviously pave the way for the introduction of ID (or at least common ID arguments) into science classrooms. HB 5606 apparently replaces HB 5251, which was introduced last year. While the previous bill specifically mentioned evolution and global warming as theories about which "critical thinking" should be required, the new bill does not mention any particular theories. Here is the relevant text:
The course content expectations for science shall include using the…