Search my blog for Texas and you’ll find a wealth of facts (and my opinion) about why the Texas educational system is poised on the brink of total destruction. The latest case is the obvious and ham-fisted attempt to silence real science by the forcing of Chris Comer to resign because she sent out an email letting people know about an anti-ID lecture that was coming to town.
The Texas Education Agency’s Deputy Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds is the person behind this, by advocating that Ms. Comer be fired. Her email to other people in the TEA about this is clear:
This is highly inappropriate. I believe this is an offense that calls for termination or, at the very least, reassignment of responsibilities.
So Ms. Reynolds is in a position of authority in TEA, and called for Ms. Comer’s termination. Got that? OK, so why, in an interview with the Austin American-Statesman, did she say this?
AAS: Were you surprised she resigned?
LR: Yes, because I had asked her supervisor to look into the e-mail issue. But I wasn’t kept in the loop. I was at a meeting some time later when someone mentioned, “By the way, she (Chris Comer) is resigning today.”
She wasn’t kept in the loop? She called for Ms. Comer to be fired!
Her (to be kind) prevarications continue to an absurd level.
AAS: Did you object to the content of Comer’s e-mail regarding evolution?
LR: I saw the e-mail being sent as, “Chris Comer, director of the TEA science curriculum,” and was concerned about the agency’s image. If it had been sent out on a personal e-mail account, I would have had no problem with it.
She objected to the science division of TEA supporting science. There is simply no other way to look at this (unless you spin it or lie about it). Ms. Comer sent out an email alerting people of a science lecture, and got trashed because of it.
And the money quote:
AAS: Has this episode had a chilling effect on TEA employees?
LR: I don’t think there is a muzzle on anyone.
No, an employee was forced out for sending an email supporting science. Why should that have a chilling effect?
Let’s be clear: Ms. Comer was forced out of her job for sending out an email that (it is claimed) didn’t represent the stance of TEA (but absolutely should represent it), yet Ms. Reynolds sent out an email wrongly saying Comer should be fired for it.
See the irony? Ms. Reynolds still has her job. And you know what? I think the wrong person resigned.
Whatever happened to personal integrity? I thought Texas built its history on such a practice.
Tip of the ten-gallon hat to PZ.
December 14th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
Phil, do you have, or know where to get, Ms. Reynolds’ e-mail address? As a Texas resident I believe I have the right to demand some explanation of incompitence from my elected (or appointed) officials.
Thanks
December 14th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
And, unfortunately for the rest of us, Texas is large enough that they have influence over the textbooks used in just about every other state in the U.S.
December 14th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Ryan, sadly, you will just get politico double-speak. That’s the provenance of that specimen, after all.
December 14th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
While it is frustrating in the extreme to see these people lie and manipulate to force their personal religious beliefs into school curriculum, I have to take comfort in the fact that science and critical thinking is going to win out eventually. Last time I checked, you can’t pray your way to the moon, or modify a gene by believing in it, or manipulate the physical universe by following untested practices. Despite all the prostrations, faith-based thinking is a dead end pursuit. A highly annoying and perhaps damaging one, but ultimately self-destructive.
Science works, faith doesn’t (at least on the physical, let’s-actually-figure-stuff-out-level). I’m sure a dozen people are going to get on here and tell me how “wrong” I am for saying this, but let’s face it – you can’t pray your way out of reality.
December 14th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
A recent international study ranked American 15 year olds 17th in science and 24th in math. That was out of 30 nations surveyed. Given that our nation is debating creationism, is it any surprise our kids weren’t ranked higher?
At any rate, I just weighed in on that subject myself.
December 14th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Ryan: This is a list of phone numbers for TEA members including Reynolds. Use area code 512.
http://mansfield.tea.state.tx.us/TEA.AskTED.Web/TSDfiles/tsd2007/tagged/tea_hierarchy_org_charts.pdf
December 14th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
I wish Comer had forced the TEA to fire her rather than resigning first. I can understand perfectly why she would have preferred to get out of there without fighting it out, but it’s a shame that she wasn’t able to force their hand.
Meanwhile, over at his Uncomment Descent web site, Dembski has taken to likening Comer’s FYI email about Barbara Forrest to someone sending an FYI email about a talk by creationist nutjob Ken Ham, saying that our side would be up in arms about that.
I doubt Dembski could have found a less equivalent situation if it had tried. They truly are idiots, the lot of them.
December 14th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
I try not to be prejudicial or bigoted toward Texas, but being a Californian, it’s difficult. Every day I see tousands of recent immigrants who are harder working, more honest, and better educated than the people running the entire state of Texas. Texas energy corporations, with the help of some of their politicians have managed to pull off some of the worst corporate malfeasance in years, faking energy shortages that cost us Californians over 20 billion dollars and played a significant role in the republican ad campaign that resulted in Gray Davis’ ousting. We got rid of our own governor and installed a republican mouthpiece(at least a semi-moderate mouthpiece, but still) at the request of republicans all because Davis was stupid enough to trust Texas republicans! And this is what passes for christian honesty and business ethics among Texas leadership!
I’m considering running for president on a single issue platform-Give Texas and every Republican in it back to Mexico! The taxes and revenue we lose from oil and industry will be more than offset by the relief from corporate bailouts, pension scams, school board lawsuits, and all the other general thieving, undermining and chicanery that flourishes in that paradise of upstanding christian morality.
I apologize to the residents of Austin and any other sane Texans, but you’ll have to deal with the generalizations. If you camp out in an asylum long enough, people are going to start to think that you’re crazy!
December 14th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
To contact Lizzette Reynolds, promoted to Deputy Commissioner try
lizzette.reynolds@tea.state.tx.us
December 14th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
Q. How can you tell if a creationist is lying? A. Her lips move.
December 14th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
I had a fellow engineer at an important medical device company where I worked with her in R&D ask me about the pretty picture I had as the wallpaper on my computer. I told her that it was one of the nearby galaxies.
She said, “What’s a galaxy?”
This was from a person who had gone through lots and lots of technical training, had gotten a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and had won a position in the R&D department of a huge medical device company.
How, how is it possible to even finish grade school without knowing what is a galaxy?!?!?
I am terrified about the condition of USA science education. We are in very bad trouble.
December 14th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
Consider legal action against people who tell such lies in a public forum,,,
Oh, Lying isn’t illegal?
Darn!!!
GAry 7
December 14th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
“What’s a galaxy?”
Ugh.
I’m doing my part… every year, I give a talk to local elementary and middle school students about astronomy and space exploration, and I chaperon field trips to planetariums and geology museums. If I can ignite a spark of interest in just one kid, I’m happy. If several kids get interested, I’m ecstatic. They may not persue a career nor even a hobby in these fields, but they’ll at least remember that they had fun hearing about some really neat stuff they might not otherwise have known about, and they’ll know how & where to look for more info if they choose to.
It’s not much, but I’ll continue to do this even after the current times of irrational thought are past.
December 15th, 2007 at 2:14 am
davery, while it is true that praying doesn’t work, neither do the people who think so care much about the fact that science does work. They do not seem to appreciate that their SUVs, handguns, and all the other technology they use is a direct result of the scientific method. With deteriorating levels of education (“what’s a galaxy?”), it is not inconceivable that the US will be slipping into a new dark age. Let’s hope your next president does not pander to these Neanderthals.
PS. Off topic: BA could you set your RSS feed to show more blog entries? You blog at a phenomenal rate, and often a discussion gets cut short (at least for me) because the entry does no longer show up in the feed. As a comparison, you show the latest 7 entries, while for example Cosmic Variance shows the latest 20. I think for your blogging speed 20 is about right.
December 15th, 2007 at 6:02 am
Davery posts:
[[Despite all the prostrations, faith-based thinking is a dead end pursuit.]]
Yeah, just look at all those failures who used it — Augustine, Aquinas, William of Ockham, Nicolas of Cusa, Albertus Magnus, Copernicus, Galileo, Louis Pasteur, James Clerk Maxwell, Alfred Russel Wallace, Jane Goodall, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Francisco Ayala, Allan Sandage… what a bunch of losers!
December 15th, 2007 at 7:07 am
Another excellent argument for national science and math standards, by grade level, from elementary school. Texas would still have influence, but would not be in a position to dictate.
“How, how is it possible to even finish grade school without knowing what is a galaxy?!?!?”
My dad retires from NASA. He told me about a conversation he had with a co-worker in which he mentioned other galaxies. His co-worker said “There are no other galaxies. The Milky Way is all there is.”
But wasn’t it controversial until a few decades ago just what distant galaxies visible from Earth were? ISTM that the establishment that they were really other galaxies, and not clouds of dust or something, was a big deal within the last century.?
December 15th, 2007 at 7:11 am
Barton,
Can you name any scientific or technical discovery any of those people made by faith? Did Galileo discover the moons of Jupiter by faith? Did Maxwell formulate electromagnetic waves by faith? Is food pasturization ‘faith based’?
The plain truth is faith sucks raw eggs when it comes to discovering attributes of the physical world. Science is done by observation, experiment, and honest evaluation of the data. Faith has nothing to do with it.
Jim
December 15th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Jim – you beat me to it. Hear, hear.
December 15th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
I think things have changed , but formerly writers of ‘science’ fiction on television and movies confused ‘solar system’ with ‘galaxy.’ I remember that ‘Lost in Space’ did it, and almost every alien was from a ‘far off galaxy.’
December 16th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
I’ll second PK’s call for more entries in the RSS feed, or maybe a longish index of recent posts in the sidebar. It is sometimes hard to keep up!