{"id":1270,"date":"2008-03-26T23:44:35","date_gmt":"2008-03-27T03:44:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=1270"},"modified":"2008-03-26T23:44:35","modified_gmt":"2008-03-27T03:44:35","slug":"biology-is-constructed-but-theres-only-one-version-of-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=1270","title":{"rendered":"Biology is constructed, but there&#8217;s only one version of history"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today the <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.tampabay.com\/schools\/2008\/03\/academic-freedo.html\">Florida Senate PreK-12 committee approved<\/a> Ronda Storms&#8217;s bill (<a href=\"http:\/\/flsenate.gov\/cgi-bin\/view_page.pl?Tab=session&amp;Submenu=1&amp;FT=D&amp;File=sb2692.html&amp;Directory=session\/2008\/Senate\/bills\/billtext\/html\/\">SB 2692<\/a>) that would undercut the new state science standards that include evolution as the basic model of biology. It&#8217;s called the &#8220;Academic Freedom Act,&#8221; but it only applies to biology teachers who want to teach Intelligent Design (or the Flying Spaghetti Monster theory of creation). If you&#8217;re a history teacher, you&#8217;re on your own with a set of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.leg.state.fl.us\/statutes\/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&amp;Search_String=&amp;URL=Ch1003\/SEC42.HTM&amp;Title=-%3E2007-%3ECh1003-%3ESection%2042#1003.42\">rigid legal prescriptions<\/a> that tell you what history is: <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>American history shall be viewed as factual, not as constructed, shall be viewed as knowable, teachable, and testable, and shall be defined as the creation of a new nation based largely on the universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>So someone who thinks that the Declaration of Independence was undercut by a more conservative Constitution is forbidden from teaching that. Since history is factual, you can&#8217;t debate arguments about whether the founders were more influenced by their views of Enlightenment debates in Europe, Renaissance political theories, or classical history. And you definitely can&#8217;t read David W. Noble&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/worldcat.org\/oclc\/420082&amp;referer=brief_results\">Historians against History<\/a> (1965), which critiques precisely this claim that the history of the U.S. represents an entirely fresh start, a dramatic break from the past. <\/p>\n<p>To mash up W.C. Fields and Elbert Hubbard, biology is a rich stew of diverse views, but history is one damned fact after another. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today the Florida Senate PreK-12 committee approved Ronda Storms&#8217;s bill (SB 2692) that would undercut the new state science standards that include evolution as the basic model of biology. It&#8217;s called the &#8220;Academic Freedom Act,&#8221; but it only applies to biology teachers who want to teach Intelligent Design (or the Flying Spaghetti Monster theory of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-policy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-ku","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}