In brief: Chris Comer, director of science curriculum, was pushed out after she sent an e-mail promoting a local talk by the author of “Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design [1]“. Comer merely sent a notice about the talk as an “FYI.”
The School board tried to claim that she was dismissed (after 9 years) for spamming this email. It probably had nothing to do with her testimony in the Dover trial. A quick search of the news [2] shows that both liberals and conservatives are aghast at this development, so close on the heels of the embarrassment in PA.
This National Center for Science Education report [3] contains the “offending” email at the bottom of a concise summary of this shameful (yet somehow predictable) event. I wish the forwards that I regularly receive were as concise and clear as this email.
MensNewsDaily.com [4] who boast: “in the Top 75 Right-of-Center Websites for 2007” reports:
The advocacy group Texas Citizens for Science have released a statement saying, in part, “The real reason [Comer] was forced to resign is because the top TEA administrators and some SBOE members wanted her out of the picture before the state science standards—the science TEKS—were reviewed, revised, and rewritten next year. Plans are underway by some SBOE members and TEA administrators to diminish the requirement to teach about evolutionary biology in the Biology TEKS and to require instead that biology instructors ‘Teach the Controversy’ about the ‘weaknesses’ of evolution, that is, teach the Creationist-inspired and -created bogus controversy about evolution that doesn’t exist within legitimate science.”
It seems that Texas is determined to join Kansas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania in the contest for most laughable academic standing in science. But we know the caliber of Texas politicians quite well, by now.
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