Texas State Board of Education Censorship

Steven Schafersman's post to his blog at the Houston Chronicle regarding the new Earth and Space Science standards was deleted under pressure from some Young-Earth Creationist (YEC) members of the SBOE. Here is the first paragraph:

The new Earth and Space Science (ESS) course standards (and all other science course standards) will be up for approval before the State Board of Education (SBOE) during January 21-23. Some SBOE members--the seven who are Young Earth Creationists (YECs)--will attempt to make changes to the ESS standards in ways that will damage the scientific integrity and accuracy of the course. In particular, these SBOE members will try to negatively modify or delete the standards that require students to understand the following topics that deal with scientific topics they consider controversial: age of the Earth and universe, radiometric dating, evolution of fossil life, and the origin of life by abiotic chemical processes. These topics are the ones that YECs consider to be controversial; indeed, they are obsessed with them to the exclusion of everything else.

Read the rest of the post on the Texas Citizens for Science website. Steven Schafersman is President of Texas Citizens for Science and contributed to the new ESS standards development effort.