Editorials
Board Puts Politics Ahead of Science
September 14, 2006
The Michigan State Board of Education has done a disservice to science and to high school science teachers by delaying adoption of the science portion of Michigan's new requirements for high school graduation. The board voted 6-2 Tuesday in favor of a delay requested by state legislators who are pushing faith-based alternatives to the theory of evolution.
This is just another attempt to keep a door open to teaching creationism or intelligent design. The board should have closed it, as science teachers requested. Board members get elected to make decisions, not to defer to political pressure.
The delay was requested by the chairs of the House and Senate Education Committees to accommodate Republican state Reps. Jack Hoogendyk of Kalamazoo and John Moolenaar of Midland, who want a key wording change inserted into the policy. As it stands, the policy directs that teachers demonstrate how fossil records, comparative anatomy and other evidence "may" corroborate the theory of evolution. Hoogendyk and Moolenaar are pushing to have the words read "may or may not."
Sounds innocuous, but this is really about injecting faith and beliefs into science.
Michigan's new curriculum is supposed to set tough guidelines, not try to spoon-feed an ideology to students. Teachers who are allowed to, will, no doubt instruct students in the value of thinking about science broadly and asking critical questions.
By deferring even this much to the legislators, the state board has essentially given science teachers a vote of no confidence and deprived them of a chance to collaborate on classroom strategies. That's because the board won't vote until Oct. 10, and the science curriculum guidelines were supposed to be in place by an Oct. 3 statewide conference for teachers on Earth science, biology, chemistry and physics.
The conference will now use draft guidelines while the state board decides whether politics is going to figure in the final version.
 | Home | Back |
Find dates Neanderthals later
Gibraltar cave produces new evidence
BY MALCOLM RITTER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 14, 2006
|
|
NEW YORK -- Neanderthals survived for thousands of years longer than scientists thought, with small lingering bands finding refuge in a massive cave near the southern tip of Spain, new research suggests.
The work contends that Neanderthals were using a cave in Gibraltar at least 2,000 years later than their presence had been firmly documented anywhere before, researchers said.
"Maybe these are the last ones," said Clive Finlayson of the Gibraltar Museum, who reported the findings Wednesday with colleagues on the Web site of the journal Nature.
The paper says charcoal samples from fires that Neanderthals set in the cave are about 28,000 years old and maybe just 24,000 years old.
End of the Neanderthals
Neanderthals were stocky, muscular hunters in Europe and western Asia who appeared more than 200,000 years ago. They died out after anatomically modern humans arrived in Europe some 35,000 to 40,000 years ago and spread west into Neanderthal territory.
Scientists have long been fascinated by the last days of the Neanderthals. Were they doomed because they couldn't compete with the encroaching modern humans for resources, or because they caught new germs from the moderns, or because of climate change? Did the two groups have much contact, and what kind?
They didn't appear to encounter each other in Gibraltar at Gorham's Cave. More than 5,000 years separate the last traces of the Neanderthals from the earliest evidence of modern humans, Finlayson said. He believes the area near the cave contained small bands of Neanderthals and advancing moderns at the same time, but over a large and varied landscape. So it's not clear if the two groups ever met, he said.
The Neanderthals probably roamed a large area and used the cave periodically as a place to cook, eat and sleep, he said. The cave has yielded butchered bones of such animals as wild goat and deer, and remains of mussels and shellfish. At the time of the Neanderthals, the Mediterranean Sea was about three miles away; rising sea level has since brought the water to within a few dozen yards.
Experts said the region is a likely place to find the last vestiges of Neanderthals, because it's the tip of a geographic cul-de-sac that leads away from central Europe.
Heard this before
Eric Delson of Lehman College in the Bronx and the American Museum of Natural History, who did not participate in the research, said the paper's 28,000-year-old date seems secure, but that its case for Neanderthal presence after that is shaky.
Even the older date is the only clear evidence of Neanderthals anywhere after 30,000 years ago, he said. But there have been prior claims of "the last Neanderthal" that were eventually shot down, and whether this one will hold up remains to be seen, he said.
Neanderthal online: www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/neand.htm
Copyright © 2006 Detroit Free Press Inc.
No comments:
Post a Comment