New science standards mean progress in Kentucky

Climate change is a scientific fact - not just a theory.

Evolution is a scientific fact - not just a theory.

I don't support Common Core per se (because it has too much corporate input and relies too much on standardized testing), but I damn sure welcome Kentucky's new standards for teaching science in schools. Kentucky's education system has long been gummed up by failed gimmicks, right-wing propagandizing, constitutional violations, economic inequality, corporal punishment, graft, and other ills - so it's refreshing to see progress for a change.

Yesterday, the Kentucky Board of Education passed - with a smashing 9 to 0 vote - new science standards that have ignited the wrath of the Tea Party and other precincts of the Far Right. These standards provide for updated knowledge about climate change and evolution - knowledge that has been missing in most American schools.

The extreme right opposes the new standards because facts are scary things to them. State Sen. Mike Wilson (not to be confused with Mike Wilson of the Cincinnati Tea Party) heads the Senate Education Committee, and he complained that the new standards teach that evolution can create new species. But it's a proven fact that evolution does create new species. That's the very definition of speciation.

Richard Innes of the far-right Bluegrass Institute - the same clowns who have been pushing for a right-to-scab law - groaned that the new standards will teach children that climate change is caused by human activity. Uh, Richard? The debate is over. Climate change is caused by human activity.

Overall, however, Kentuckians seem to support the new standards. Backers of the updated guidelines presented an Internet petition to the Kentucky Board of Education featuring 3,700 signatures.

The standards are not final yet, because - like everything else when you live under a unitary legislature - they may face a review by lawmakers. It would be an unforgivable shame if legislators dashed the futures of Kentucky's young people by gutting the standards.

(Source: http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20130605/NEWS01/306050127/New-Kentucky-academic-standards-science-advance-despite-critics)