A Dallas creationist group’s proposal to train science teachers has unleashed a flurry of mixed opinions from Nobel laureates, high school teachers, ministers, and scientific researchers.
Last month, a state advisory group gave the Institute for Creation Research preliminary approval to offer an online master’s degree in science education. Since then, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board – which has the final say – has received more than 200 e-mails on the subject.
The coordinating board provided 286 pages of e-mails in response to an open-records request from The Dallas Morning News. Many of the notes are from Texas, but others come from all corners of the U.S. and the world – from Florida to the Philippines, Nevada to Nigeria.
The letters show how heated the debate has become, as Texas and other states try to figure out the best way to teach students science.
“The latest round of so-called creation science truly scares me and all of my colleagues here at UT Southwestern Medical Center,” wrote Alfred Gilman, dean of UT Southwestern’s medical school and a Nobel Prize winner in medicine. “Approval of this sort of nonsense as science in Texas will have a significant negative impact on our ability to attract the best minds to the state.
“How can Texas simultaneously launch a war on cancer and approve educational platforms that submit that the universe is 10,000 years old?”
Just as many people, if not more, wrote to defend the institute’s proposal.
