hmm. I found this pdf which summarizes the "sunshine state standards:"
http://etc.usf.edu/flstandards/sss/pdf/science9.pdf

that says,
That standard has an ID of: SC.F.2.4.3. The actual curriculum that a school purchases will have lessons that map to one or more standards, so that the teachers can keep track and make sure they've covered everything they were supposed to. What that means is, you can google that ID and find sample cirriculum that teach it. For example:
http://www.fairchildgarden.org/uploa...benchmarks.pdf

Anyway, it seems to me that they aren't really on the fence (which would imply they haven't made up their mind). It just looks like they're trying to avoid controversy, but still teach the major ideas. Teachers have such hard jobs as it is. Can't blame them for trying to deflect some controversy.

BTW, in googling that standard ID, I found this little app:

http://www.explorelearning.com/index...ResourceID=554

It's quite cool. Everybody should check it out. You pick the color of leaves, then it puts bugs on the leaves and simulates predation by birds. The bugs that contrast the most have the highest chance of getting picked off.

Unfortunately, it has a timer and only lets you play with it for about five minutes. :-( I was having a lot of fun making bugs.

A lot of evolutionary concepts are easy to understand using simple models. Example:
Competition
If both of my brothers want to eat Oreos, and there are not enough for both of them, they will get in a fight, and only one will get them.
But if one wants Oreos, and one wants Chips Ahoy, they each have a niche and there is no fighting.

__________________
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song
'Evolution and science are one thing, but you don’t mess with Yoko Ono. Everybody knows that. ' - 386sx

I do not wish to break BAUT rules by promoting ATM ideas here, but hope it is okay to make direct brief response to other’s comments which illustrate issues in the NOVA debate. I am not ready to offer ideas that go beyond my previous ATM threads on Astrology and Science.
Thanks Moose, I am planning a new ATM thread on precessional cosmology which will address these points.
It is ironic that astrology has even lower public repute than ID when the case for ‘irreducible complexity’ such as the flagellum and eye examples has been more decisively refuted than the case for astrological effects. ID proponents seek to bend truth to justify a pre-existing creation myth for religious motives whereas popular astrologers wildly exaggerate the power of an unproven (but I would argue hypothetically possible) cosmic effect for commercial motives.
This small scale BAUT study was not decisive, as it seemed to assume that effects must either be strong or non-existent. By analogy, proving that the cosmological constant is zero to 119 decimal points does not prove it is equal to zero.
You can’t equate a prioristic thinking with being closed-minded (not my term). 19th century scientists thought that space was a priori Euclidean, but this does not mean they had closed minds. They simply hadn’t been exposed to the relativistic case. I agree most scientists are open to being convinced by evidence, but I would say in the case of astrology that scientists are generally predisposed to assume this evidence is not worth trying to collect. The ‘a priori’ equates to ‘we can’t imagine a mechanism, the evidence is weak or obviously flawed, the proponents are stupid, we have better things to do, so exercise extreme skepticism’. My point, relevant to the NOVA debate, was that science is not perfect, and brings its own cultural baggage. It would take a new scientific revolution to change this situation regarding astrology.
Statistical analysis of large scale population birth and death date data sets has not been tried to my knowledge except in the Gauquelin work which did find effects which have not been explained by science. My view is that astrological effects are weak but real and could be statistically detected by large scale statistical studies, for example using existing population level epidemiological data.
This illustrates my point about the difficulty of impartiality in this topic.

That part of the program had me rofl! Well played Nova, well played! The very name of the agenda bent on denouncing evolution, caught with its pants down in an "evolutionary stage" between the "old" name and the "new" name- absolutely priceless.

It was utter luck that I caught the program, but I am glad I did. Literally, I set my dvd recorder to scoop out 8 hrs of ota digital kcet on that particular evening, just to see what goes on in that channel. Amongst the 8 hrs of stuff I couldn't stand to wade through, there was this this little gem of a program that caught my eye.

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Dude, don't be a Quaid!

Since it covered only a few jokers, it was hardly meant to be decisive.

Coincidence is an explanation. Response bias is an explanation. Just because you may not be satisfied with scientific explanations doesn't mean there are none.


EDIT: D'oh! Got sucked back into talking about astrology again. Sorry mods, won't happen again.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

About the threats, I read in a dsicover magazine a couple years ago how researchers into AIDS/HIV transmsission and othe fields right wingers do not like were threatened as well, seems like a common tactic for them. Watched most of the show online and really liked it.

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If it's just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.
Contact Carl Sagan

In the NY Times magazine this week, there was a piece about creationist geologists. Blech!
Even though it was explaining that they were wrong, it's still giving them attention.

__________________
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song
'Evolution and science are one thing, but you don’t mess with Yoko Ono. Everybody knows that. ' - 386sx

Just watched the last of it a little hint, get the books delivered to your home before sending them to the school so you can check what eles the book company sends with them.

__________________
If it's just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.
Contact Carl Sagan